Almost every criminal mind started off with the urge for theft or to steal something, mainly for reasons of personal use or financial gain. Through the centuries, the criminals developed an addiction to stealing, including priceless jewels, fine and expensive art, money, all kinds of machines, illegal substances, and even human organs. But between all of the biggest organized crime scams and the simplest small-time crimes, car theft always has occupied a special place in that world. Back in the old days in Chicago, during the Great Depression for example, every 30 seconds an automobile has been stolen around the area and chances were 1 in 143, if you lived in that time, that it was going to be yours. Also, in those days chances of recovering the stolen car were quite little or to be precise, they were 14 %. In most cases the punishment for the theft was small, like for example if a young individual stole an expensive car, it was treated as a slap-on-the-wrist crime, but if someone had stolen $10,000, than he was considered a very bad guy and the crime was also considered quite serious and that’s why the car theft became a common thing which completely got out of hand as a certain type of criminal activity.





Now, that same criminal activity can be divided in three major categories, such as the first group which were the “joy-riders”, the second category which belonged to the individuals who stole cars as a necessary adjunct to other criminal activities, and the third category belonged to the individuals involved in organized auto-theft rings for resale purposes.


For years, the auto-theft activity was one of the most frequently unsolved crimes because in those days it was mostly committed by teenage joy-riders. When a youngster stole a car, got away with it, and bragged to other young gang members about it, suddenly it became an infectious “decease” among the rest of the young crowd. The act of joyriding became so serious that many young boys were prosecuted under the Dyer Act of 1919 and until the 1930’s the federal government did not draw a distinction between joyriding and professional car theft. Obviously one of the main differences was that the car locks supposedly prevented theft from joy-riders, but a professional thieve would simply cut padlocks and chains with bolt cutters.



1927 real high school girls working as mechanics


For example, the infamous Forty-two Gang which was a group of teenage boys who committed an endless series of crimes on Chicago’s West Side during the late 1920’s and early 30’s, they mostly concentrated on auto theft and became very good at it. They were very notorious around the neighbourhoods by terrorizing the streets in stolen cars and committing all kinds of crimes and stunts, which some might’ve ended up being fatal. Some of the older members even had skills to “whip” corners, a very interesting getaway method in which a driver took a corner as fast as possible on two wheels. Just like in the movies. For example, in 1929, the cops went on a chase with a stolen Sedan and when they caught up with the criminal, they couldn’t believe their eyes because there was a very young boy sitting behind the wheel. Also, on April 11, 1929, police detective Thomas Donnelly and his squad saw three youths riding along Taylor Street in an automobile which they suspected had been stolen. The cops went after the three young thugs and so in panic, the boys abandoned the car and started running. After a search around the neighbourhood, one of the cops saw a foot beneath a board which blocked a narrow passage between two houses. He pulled the foot and found one Joe Cozzi, alias Malone, 17 years old, and right behind him, crouched Sam Fosse, also 17 years old, and another one Joseph Nuzzlo, 16 years old. The Nuzzlo boy was taken to the Juvenile home as for his two comrades, they were taken to the detective bureau and, after it was found that the car was stolen, they were locked up. Cozzi admitted that he had stolen more than 15 other automobiles in less than a month, with other members of the 42 gang. The young boy explained to the cops that he wanted get money to hire a lawyer for his old brother, who was serving a term in Pontiac reformatory, also for cat theft.



42 gang member Joe Cozzi


So according to the previous examples, by now many homeless and starving boys, with little else to occupy their time, joined up in this so-called “car-stealing” adventure and practiced their new skills. According to some sources, the older members of the gang taught the youngsters in the methods of stealing or hijacking cars. They also would train the younger members in using the cars after they already stole them, which brought them to the second category of auto-theft, meaning no more “joy-riding”, but instead using the stolen car for other criminal activities such as robberies, kidnappings and in some cases even murder. Also in the dirty alleys, members would set up barrels and tires as an obstacle course so the younger members can learn on how to do fast driving and “whip” corners at the same time.


It wasn’t long before many young members had earned a well-deserved reputation as Chicago’s best car thieves and wheelmen, skills which often came in handy in the underworld. There could be no doubt that the stealing of a car and a hair-raising getaway at the same time was way more preferable to being caught for example. So in time, some of the youngsters had become professionals in the job thus drawing the attention of senior organized crime gangs which later played a significant and at times a leading role in this criminal activity and slowly forming it into a business.


The young wheelmen came most handy during Prohibition because many bootleggers needed cars for transportation of booze or other illegal activities and they even ordered for expensive cars for their own use, for much lower price obviously because they were stolen. The youngsters had garages somewhere around the West Side and Cicero areas, and from there they sold all kinds of stolen cars to the racketeers. According to some sources, the young criminals rented the garage through one Cicero bootlegger, who in turn collected the rent or took one stolen car every month instead of cash. Once a month, the youngsters would go all around the bars and took orders for automobiles from the senior gangsters and bootleggers and since most of the members of the 42 gang were from Italian heritage, their connections in the bootlegging world were also Italian, mostly Sicilian, and slowly the gangsters took the role as criminal mentors.


From this point on, the gang “graduated” in the third level of the criminal activity which was organizing an auto-theft ring. In those days many of the youthful organized car-theft rings were controlled by other professional thieves or non-related criminals such as bootleggers, racketeers or members of the Mob. The car-theft racket wasn’t something which one individual could’ve dominate it as a whole, but instead each ring operated independently from the other rings and the control of one ring was usually vested in one person with the most connections to finance the operation or setting up necessary alternation facilities and arranging disposition of the stolen cars. In time, the young thieves devised their own so-called lexicon or slang regarding the car theft business. For example a “Bent” or a “Kinky” meant stolen car, or a “Dauber” a car painter who worked quickly and made a “Slicker” which meant a newly painted stolen car, or a “Dog-House” which meant a small garage which was used as a safe house for hiding stolen cars until they cooled down.


By now the 42’s knew all of the basic steps of stealing a car, like taking off the ignition lock, connect the wires, break the steering lock and drive off but the senior racketeers also taught the young criminals on how to change the numbers of the stolen cars, without being detected that it was changed. During the late 1920’s Joe Newel, head of the Automobile Theft Bureau, reportedly said “The greatest transformation that takes place in the stolen machine is in the clever doctoring of motor serial numbers because this is the first thing a thief does to a car.” The scheme went something like this: the youngsters would write down the models and dates of production of the stolen cars and give it to someone who had a connection all the way in New York. After that the guy in New York would watch for cars of the same description and copy off the numbers and then send them back via mail, concealed between pages of magazines or books.


Back in Chicago, the 42’s would receive their numbers and with the help of one experienced mechanic, they would change the numbers of the stolen cars with the help of special instruments to measure the depths of the numbers so all can be of even depth. It was possible for them to “re-stamp” an 8 over 3 where the 3 is a round top 3 for example, or 4 over 1 which was pretty easy or to change 5 to 3 etc. After changing the numbers, the youngsters would throw vinegar over the engine so the numbers would look rusty. From this point on, the 42’s were selling the stolen cars at prices from $80 to $500 per car, obviously depending on the model. Like for example, Fords went from $80 to $90, Buick or Chrysler went from $150 to $200, a Peerless and Packard for $200 and Cadillac sedan for $300. After that the youngsters would split the cash in two or three ways, depending on the number of individuals involved in the theft.


If someone got caught by the police, the youngsters usually bought their way out by paying off the cops with $20 or $50. But in some cases, guns were drawn and lives were taken during the arrests. For example in 1934, Policeman Stanley Bobosky was a member of the States Attorney’s special team for automobile thievery who went after the men, said to be heads of car-theft rings, which employed many youths to steal cars. One day, Bobosky was following a suspicious car on which he had previous info of being stolen. At Lake Street and Western Avenue, Bobosky ordered for the car to stop and as he stepped from his car to question the three occupants, one of them shot him in the left side, thus fleeing the scene. Few hours later, the cop died from the gunshot wound at the Washington Boulevard hospital.


But the fight wasn’t over because that same year the government managed to break up more than few auto-theft rings around the Chicago area. The cops made many arrests and discovered many stolen cars and motors under haystacks, buried under the ground, concealed in manholes or thrown in vacant lots. The cops arrested one alleged “King of Car Thieves” from the West Side known as Ray Anatori. He was a 20 year old criminal, who when arrested the cops found two pistols and one shotgun concealed in the stolen car. Another youthful gang on which the cops also managed to break up maintained a garage at 3816 Montrose Avenue and dealt in cars by a manufacturer who placed numbers on the transmission only. Used cars of this make were bought and the transmissions were easily changed for those in stolen cars. The system was so perfect that only few of the stolen cars have been recovered. The cops even managed to break up one of the largest car theft rings at the time, which was operated around the Posen, Tinley Park, Blue Island and Dixmoor areas. This was another quite young, same as the 42’s but non-Italian gang, and the other difference was that these fellows stole the cars and besides reselling them, they also striped some of the stolen cars out of their parts and resold those same parts separately. According to some reports, after the theft they would strip the car in less than 24 hours and resell all of the stolen parts in the next few hours. After that all of the parts which were no longer needed or couldn’t be sold, the young criminals buried them few feet under the ground. This was one of the first examples of what would be known decades later as the “chop-shop” racket.


Even though the government managed to put up a quite a strong fight against this so-called car-stealing disease, by the mid 1930’s many of these thieves used the auto-theft business as a stepping stone to higher levels of criminality, such as gambling and extortion. According to some statistics, 70% of all male felons were in fact graduate car thieves and many infamous gangsters started their long-time criminal careers in the same fashion. Few of the most notables were alleged members of the 42 gang such as Sam Giancana, Marshall Caifano and Charles Nicoletti. For example, back in 1925, at the age of 17, Sam Giancana was arrested for auto-theft and was sentenced to 30 days in the House of Correction. In 1927, he was again arrested for auto-theft but this time the case was dismissed, probably because of corruption since the 42’s were known for keeping a stash of money in case of “rainy days” such as this one. Marshall Caifano was also arrested for auto-theft at the age of 17, and as for Nicoletti he was arrested for auto-theft countless times same as his future partner in crime Phil Alderisio who was also arrested in Wheaton, Illinois back in 1933 on suspicion of being involved in a car theft ring.


During the late 1930’s, Chicago’s underworld was already out of the bootlegging business and was highly interested in the gambling and labor racketeering businesses and so my point is that there wasn’t much space or interest for the car theft business. By 1940, organized automobile thieves have virtually been driven out of business, because according to some statistics from that time, automobile thefts have declined in Chicago from 35,233 annually to 2,863 for 1939. The crime activity decreased during World War II especially the juvenile auto theft, probably due to the actions of more careful owners who were mindfully aware that tires and gasoline were in short supply and insurance companies were refusing to replace either stolen tires or stolen cars. Also the syndicate such as the Chicago Outfit wasn’t much involved in the racket until the 1950’s. During the 1940’s, many of the gangsters became involved in extorting car companies and so they mostly drove new cars, or in other words, they bought their own cars. Also if some of the gangsters wanted to transport something illegal, such as stacks of cash, weapons or gambling devices, they usually used rental cars which were taken under false names. But the real truth was that they had many other highly lucrative sources to make money and didn’t bring the heat over their heads by getting involved in car thefts.


But by the end of the day, the remaining car theft rings still supplied the Chicago mob from time to time with stolen cars for various reasons, mostly for dirty jobs. One prominent gang which was still highly involved in the car theft business was led by George Soeder. He was one of the rare car theft ring leaders who was in his 40’s and still controlled the racket from the Melrose Park area. First the gang bought two new cars of different makes, just to get legitimate bills of sale so they can study and to learn numbering systems. Then the gang began stealing cars of the same makes and altered only the last digit of the serial number of each stolen car, so the letters and other characters of the numbering system would remain. They forged bills of sale with legitimate dealers' names, and sent the forgeries in with applications for certificates of title for the purchasers to whom they sold the stolen automobiles. The gang even arranged the delivering of the cars with certificates and license plates but later all of the innocent purchasers found that their cars had been stolen.



Abandoned stolen car in 1942


To go into further details, the thieves purchased wrecked cars, usually under fictitious names and then the wrecks were cut up and later disposed of, thus preserving only the serial plates and titles. After that, cars were then stolen which matched the wrecks in body, style and colour and the serial plates of the stolen cars were removed and the serial plates from the cut up wreck were attached instead. These operations were usually performed in so-called body shops, which were operated as alleged legitimate enterprises. From this point on the stolen cars were now ready for resale and the title paper which was obtained with the wrecked car, served as the first step in acquiring an adequate paper on which to sell the car. Soeder also had a partner known as Paul Hanson who helped in transporting stolen cars across state lines. But in 1945, the States Attorney was quite mad because of his previous statements about almost removing the car theft as a crime in the city of Chicago and so he made a case against Soeder and sentenced him to 25 years in prison as one of the country’s biggest car theft dealers, a statement which I hardly believe was true.


Another prominent car theft gang, which operated after WWII and came from the city’s West Side, was led by Carl Fiorito. This guy was mostly involved in narcotics but also in all kinds of robberies or burglaries, from stealing diamonds to stealing truck tires. He also worked as a fence for stolen property but he also resold stolen cars. But according to numerous reports, his gang also had stolen more than $1,000,000 worth of truck and automobile parts in just few years. Even though he was leader with only 4 feet 11 inches tall, Fiorito’s so-called main “street workers” was a young band of thieves known as the Priorello brothers, Sam, Dominic and Cosmo Jr. The brothers came from a long blood line of thieves and they owned a garage at the rear of their home on the West Side, which was established as a bona-fide business years ago by their father Cosmo Priorello Sr. Another one of Fiorito’s partners was James Holzer, another prominent car thief also from the West Side, and together they owned a garage at 63 East 14th Street. At the garage, they had six so-called mechanics, all African-American, including the most experienced one George Grisby and his younger brother Charles, and also Herman Harvey, Wilson Williams and Daniel Williams.


Everything went smooth until February, 1950, when the cops followed Fiorito in another car, while driving to one of his garages on the Near South Side. The cops waited for the criminal to get inside the garage and after they raided the place thus arresting 11 men including Fiorito, Holzer, the Priorello brothers and all of their car mechanics. The cops discovered four trucks and three cars, all stolen and some altered with stolen parts, and a huge quantity of stolen auto parts. At the Piorello garage on the West Side, the cops found a newly painted stolen truck with its serial and motor numbers defaced, and they also seized a great number of blank, unstamped license plates. In general, the stolen merchandise was to be sold on the black market for nearly $500,000. All of the men were convicted in criminal court on charges of receiving stolen property and many of the defendants were also sent to quite small prison sentences for their involvement in the car theft ring.


In later years, Carl Fiorito worked for one of the cruellest mobsters in the city, Fiore Buccieri who soon will organize a huge car theft ring for the organization. You see, these so-called “new era” car thieves at the time such as Fiorito were caught in most cases with 2 or 3 stolen cars tops and a lot of car parts maybe but the thing was that these guys did their job with the “speed of light”. They only needed 24 hours to be done with a car whatever it was needed to be done, and it was out on the market. In the old days, for example the youthful 42 gang did the same thing, but the thing was that the cops sometimes found garages in their areas stashed with over 50 stolen cars which was a huge number in those days because the youngsters were over filled with orders. But soon those same old days were about to be back.


By the early 1950’s the city’s most powerful criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit was changing its form into a different organization, which by coincidence this time was led by former members of the 42 gang such as Sam Giancana and Sam Battaglia on one side, North Side members Ross Prio and James Allegretti on the other, and Paul Ricca and Louis Campagna at the top with Tony Accardo still as their chief executive. In the old days the Outfit had a so-called “high council” of two to three members or bosses and one so-called chief executive to run the day to day operations. But by the mid 1950’s, two of the Outfit’s most powerful crew bosses were Giancana and Prio, with Giancana as the Outfit’s new chief executive. The reason is simple and that is the numerous natural deaths of some of the crime leaders and also the numerous government cases against the remaining ones.


Now, Giancana loved cars and I personally believe that he still loved the cash from the racket, and by the late 1950’s some of Prio’s men already had established a car theft ring for transporting stolen cars across the country’s borders. One of Prio’s lieutenants Dominick Nuccio had an underling and professional car thief known as Gerald Covelli. Covelli and one of his associates Max Olshon devised a plan to transport stolen cars from Chicago and Springfield, Illinois to Houston, Texas, while crossing state lines which was a federal crime, and once the cars reached their destination, they were smuggled into Mexico and Guatemala for resale. The boys had set up a ”dummy” auto firm, known as the Almar Motor Co. in Milwaukee to ship the stolen cars to Guatemala. It was believed that the actual stealers of the cars were Covelli, Olshon and another guy known as Michael Slepcevich. Also many new model cars with power steering and air conditioning were parked at Dock Number 5 at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, California, also awaiting shipment to Guatemala. It was a huge business which became a quite lucrative illegal operation but didn’t last long. According to some government reports, in those days the business generated over $20,000 a week or $160,000 in 2016 money.


In February, 1959, Covelli, Olshon and Slepcevich were arrested by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and were charged with interstate transportation of stolen motor vehicles. All of the defendants confirmed that they lived in Chicago and also all three added that they were bartenders by profession. U.S. Commissioner Billy Costa accepted the charges and set $50,000 court appearance bonds for each man. Once they reached the FBI offices in Huston, Olshon began cooperating right away and was debriefed thoroughly by the agents for more than several hours. Story goes that Covelli also began cooperating with the feds but with limited information. But besides his small cooperation, later that same year, Covelli was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for auto theft at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. While in jail, Covelli was again visited by the feds but this time he agreed to fully cooperate and began providing information about his fellow Outfit guys back in Chicago such as James Allegretti, Joseph DiVarco, the three Doms and Ross Prio. As additional info, seven years later or to be precise in June, 1967, Gerald Covelli was killed by a car bomb in Encino, California on orders from the Outfit’s top administration.


By the early 1960’s Sam Giancana was still the undisputed boss of the Outfit and he still had other different sources such as making profits out of the car theft racket. During this period many people, especially the rich class from Central and South America or from all around Europe and the Middle East, wanted to drive U.S. model cars such as Cadillacs, Corvettes or Lincolns. Also by this time the Outfit had a special criminal team which was headed by the boss himself and was known as “The Combine”. The Combine was a collection of some of the top criminal leaders from the organization, both Italian and non-Italian, who were mostly involved in international operations such as exporting vending machines and gambling equipment, thus making connection in high places all over the world. With the help of these transatlantic connections, many U.S. stolen cars had been transported all around the world. As a sign of respect, also many expensive stolen cars were shipped around Central America and Europe as Christmas presents for some officials or business partners there, who in turn returned the favour by letting the gangsters to freely operate their highly lucrative gambling operations. Many states in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East all had a high demand for imported cars and once the cars have reached their destination, it was extremely difficult for any law enforcement agents to track them down.

I always say that the period during the mid 1960’s was one of the toughest periods for the Outfit’s illegal operations including its top administration. Their prime income, which was the gambling business, was on the downfall and so was the car theft business. But still, one Outfit boss controlled a huge car theft ring which generated a lot of cash for the organization. That car theft ring was headed by none other than Fiore Buccieri, Alleged former 42 gang member and boss of the West Side at the time. He controlled the area extending from the Chicago River west to Harlem and from north of 22nd Street to an area which was in the Cicero territory. This guy was a real deal gangster who made a lot of money by controlling all of the crap games and loan sharking operations in his territory and tortured or killed a lot of people. If Buccieri asked you to kill somebody, you would’ve done it. It was simple as that. Also, every business that this guy touched, he turned it into a pot of gold, such as in this example with the car theft business.



Fiore Buccieri

Four of Buccieri’s main guys in the car theft business were Richard Buonomo, Pasquale Accettura and Carmen Apicella and the fourth guy was an old time bootlegger known as Herman David a.k.a. Motorcycle Mike from the Dolton area. He was called “Motorcycle Mike” because he used such a vehicle to deliver moonshine back in the days of Prohibition. All of these so-called Outfit associates controlled their own people who were involved in the business on daily basis. For example, some of David’s associates in the business were Erwin Hager Jr., Louis Novy and James Cobb, and besides stealing cars they were mostly involved in printing auto titles and counterfeiting plates and controlled interstate counterfeiting scheme that netted more than $1.000.000 per year. According to some government reports, the ring had stolen hundreds of Cadillacs in the Chicago and Indiana areas and with the help of one of the gang’s members, James Cobb who owned the Commercial Printing Company in Griffith, Indiana, they used phoney Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan titles to sell them for an average of $3,500 throughout the country.


But besides his crew, David also had two sons Robert and Orland, who loved stealing cars, mostly Cadillacs and Chevrolets, and were the main operators on the streets. One of their partners was Albert Tocco, a known Outfit enforcer and operator for the Chicago Heights crew, which by now was still led by Mob boss Frank LaPorte. The two brothers and Tocco had few car theft operations in Gary, Indiana and Youngstown, Ohio. In Gary they had one policeman on their payroll known as Kenneth Dash, operator of an auto service center known as Joseph Iatarola and few other fellows to watch the “field” but in Youngstown, their operation mostly depended on shady car dealers such as George and Peter Nasse or Rudy Geidens, who sold stolen cars imported straight from Chicago or any other place around the country. The stolen cars have been referred to as the Nasse cars, since in each case George Nasse obtained an Ohio title before selling the car. Also some of these stolen cars were sold in California, and have been referred to as the Scarcelli cars, from the name of the dealer who took them to that state. According to some government reports, the David brothers were seen meet frequently with Outfit boss Fiore Buccieri, meaning they acted as contact men between their father and the Chicago syndicate.


Even though David’s crew made quite a good amount of cash regarding the circumstances, but they were not the most lucrative faction in the Outfit’s car theft business. The second faction on my list, as I previously stated, were Richard Buonomo, Pasquale Accettura and Carmen Apicella and these guys allegedly made over 2 million dollars a year from this racket alone. Some sources described Accettura and Apicella as Buccieri’s lieutenants in charge of the scheme with Buonomo as their professional thief and ring leader. Buonomo, who had a record for auto theft dating back to 1958, led a gang of at least 20 members which took a part of stealing more than 500 automobiles in only six months around the country and made quite a good illicit income. Many of the stolen vehicles were driven from Illinois and sold in Alabama after their motor numbers were re-stamped by the gangsters to correspond with the serial plates. As usual, the stolen cars were resold by two Alabama used car dealers, Gene Bates and Jarvis Suit.


Everything went well until September, 1965, when the feds arrested 77 year old Herman David, Erwin Hager, Jr., Louis Novy, and James Cobb. This was a huge slap in the face for the Outfit’s car theft business because the feds managed to strike the heart of the operation by closing down their main printing company and car dealers. The feds also managed to find many phoney documents in the basement of old man David's home, along with a bronze 1965 Cadillac which was previously reported stolen in Oak Lawn. In a garage which was attached to David's residence, the cops also discovered an unassembled whiskey still dating from the prohibition era, bearing bullet holes and x marks. The plates and more documents were seized in the print shop, and still more were found in an old panel truck which was parked in a residential driveway in Blue Island. Another thing on which the feds realized was that the gang used bogus credentials for identification and passed over 2,000 counterfeit payroll checks for amounts between $100 and $300 in banks in the Chicago and Gary areas, and later those same checks were drawn on Calumet area oil and steel companies.


To make things even worse, in November that same year, in their second indictment the feds also arrested Buonomo, Accettura, Apicella and their dealers in Alabama Bates and Suit. Others named in the indictment were the David brothers, Gary policeman Kenneth Nash, James Cobb, Albert Tocco, Rudy Geidens and Joseph Iatarola. The conspiracy was said to include stealing motor vehicles, stealing serial plates from other motor vehicles and attaching them to the stolen vehicles, altering the identification numbers on the frames of the stolen ones so as to agree, preparing counterfeit state titles for use in selling and re-titling the vehicles, and transporting the stolen vehicles to other states for sale. The conspiracy was alleged to have existed from April, 1962 to November, 1965, when the indictment was returned.


George Steger, who lived in Illinois, testified that in the spring of 1964 he agreed to buy a 1964 Cadillac from Tocco, proprietor of the Club Domino. Tocco delivered it on May 9, together with an Indiana title, and received payment. Ervin Hager Jr. also testified that he, Tocco, and one William Dauber stole a 1964 Cadillac in Blue Island, Illinois. This was the car delivered by Tocco to Steger. It does not appear to have been transported in interstate commerce after the theft and was not named in any count. The incident was, however, relevant to show intent and pattern. A short while later, Steger negotiated with Tocco to purchase a Cadillac for one Mrs. Logan, Steger's secretary. Hager testified that Tocco, Dauber and Hager met in Chicago Heights and Tocco said that he had a sale for another car and wanted Hager to pick it up. Hager, Dauber, and another stole a Cadillac from a dealer in Elkhart, Indiana and brought it back to Tocco's Club Domino in Illinois. Hager received a title from Herman and it was shown that the payment received by Hager came from Tocco. This car was delivered on June 6, to Mrs. Logan in Illinois and the Indiana title which was turned over to her was made out in the name of an apparently fictitious person, and came from the same source as the Indiana titles for three Nasse cars and five Iatarola cars. Tocco later procured another stolen car for a friend of Steger. Steger was interviewed by the FBI in June, 1964 and later he was asked by Tocco what the FBI had said and told him that "they" had heard the radio from the FBI car when Steger was in it, coming back from the police station in Harvey. Tocco said "they haven't got anything on anybody if you don't say anything.” So with the help of the testimony, Tocco was charged and convicted with the interstate transportation of the Logan car. There was proof from which the jury could find he induced Hager and Dauber to transport it and the proof became sufficed to show participation in the conspiracy.



William Dauber


In 1966, the feds described the racketeers as a nation-wide car theft ring leaders and so they were charged for using phoney registration papers, which were usually stolen from legitimate dealer, and stolen auto serial plates to dispose of the stolen cars at prices below their market value. Richard Buonomo was also taken quickly into custody and his bond was immediately cancelled after the assistant United States attorney Richard Sikes expressed fear that because of his underworld connections, Buonomo might attempt to flee the state. The defendants pleaded guilty to two of the 10 counts with which they were charged and some of them were sentenced to 10 years in prison, as for Outfit boss Fiore Buccieri, he remained untouched. But the main thing that the cops failed to notice was that Buccieri’s operation transferred in the South suburbs with the help of William Dauber and the now imprisoned Al Tocco.


After the dismantling of Buccieri’s car theft crew, the guys who worked with Albert Tocco from the Chicago Heights area continued to thrive in the business thus making this next time period, the bloodiest chapter not only in the car-theft business, but also since the formation of the Chicago Outfit. Besides the government’s continuous struggle against organized auto-theft, during the late 1960’s, the racket became more lucrative than ever and since main Chicago Heights car theft operator Albert Tocco was constantly in and out of jail, another member from that same crew decided to have it all for himself.


James Catuara was an old time mobster who came up the ranks with the help of some of the most ruthless Outfit members from the old days. He started up as an enforcer for James Belcastro and Bruno Roti Sr., Outfit big shots from the Near South Side, but later ended up as member of Frank LaPorte’s unit. Catuara was quite an earner with many extortion, loan sharking and gambling operations around the Chicago Heights area, Calumet City and Chinatown. But he also had a big ego because he considered himself above some of the members of the organization because of his long time criminal history. So when Tocco went to jail again in 1969, Catuara was allegedly “asked” by the bosses to take over his car theft operation, thus absorbing almost every member from Tocco’s theft crew. In pure Chicago Outfit style, the crew was formed from the partnership between Italian and non-Italian members and according to numerous reports they were a very tough crew with monstrous reputation. These guys were not your ordinary car-theft crew, no sir, but instead some of them also worked as hired killers, collectors and extortionists. For example, few of the most prominent members of the crew were Sam Annerino, Mike Antonelli, Guido Fidanzi, Richard Ferraro, William Dauber and Steve Ostrowsky. Now, guys like Ferraro were more like business type of individuals and as for Annerino, Fidanzi and Dauber, these guys were natural born killers and because of their fearless reputation, they mostly extorted car thieves and “chop shop” owners.



Jimmy Catuara


The term “chop shop” is generally used for all kinds of independent car thieves that usually strip stolen cars and than sell the stripped parts or sell whole cars which are previously built with those same stolen parts. It is a branch of the car theft business and this operation usually occurs in certain mob-favourite auto repair shops and such. The “chop shop” business wasn’t something new because it existed since the day when the car theft was “invented”, as we previously saw in some of the given examples. Here’s how car chopping was done: At the beginning they unbolted the front end, which is the entire front section of the car including the fenders and the hood. This is the most valuable part of the car because it is the section most frequently damaged in accidents. The windshield was then cut out and the doors unbolted and removed. Next, the seats were removed. Then, with a torch, they cut the posts which connect the roof to the dashboard and cut through the floor width-wise in the front seat area, enabling them to remove the entire cowl. This left the mechanic with the roof section of the car connected to the back end which is often referred to in the salvage business as a rear clip. Once the car was dismantled, the usable parts were taken to he salvage yards, while the marked frame, engine, transmission, and other components were carted to a crusher to be recycled as scrap iron.



Chop shop


So this extremely lucrative illicit market for vehicle replacement parts has mushroomed in the 1970’s and it was formed for two major reasons. First, replacement parts ordered direct from the manufacturers were extremely expensive, as much as 400 percent above the pro rata price of the same parts as they originally came off the assembly line in a new car. For example, during that period an astonishing $20,000 were needed at least just to purchase all the parts separately for a standard 1979 automobile with a sticker price of $5,000. As for the chop shops, they supplied parts and plus repair work for only one third of the cost of the new replacement parts without repair work. Say you were in an accident and you need to have the front cap of your Lincoln, everything from the windshield forward replaced. It would run about $4,000 for the unpainted parts through a car dealer while on the “black market” it would be about $2,500 the most.


Second, lengthy delays in the delivery of new replacement parts discouraged many legal repair shops from ordering new car parts. In some cases, repair shops had to wait for weeks or even months, before receiving customized parts such as front ends or doors from the manufacturers. So in an effort to reduce the waiting period, many repair shops have contacted legal salvage yards for used parts but the problem was that these salvage yards didn’t always had the needed parts in their stock. Now, this is the main point where the car thieves and the Chicago Outfit came in. With one phone call to an illegal salvage yard that dealt with chop shop owners, shortened the time delivery to only one day. That is why this was a great deal for the average buyer, seller and the “average” gangster, meaning the thieves, chop shop owners, illegal repair shops and the gangsters all made quite a good amount of cash, as for the buyer, at first he saved cash and time, because when the word gets out on the street that you can pick up the repair or replacement parts that you need for your car for $250 less than anywhere else in town, you don't ask questions about where the parts came from. But later, as usual, some of the chop shop owners and repair shops became greedy and started selling the stolen parts as legitimate articles provided from their manufacturer and so the main difference between the car theft business and the chop shop operation was that the car theft only hurt the insurance companies. The greed was inevitable because the gangsters started pushing the chop shop and repair shop owners to pay their much larger “debts” or street taxes, thus forcing them to place much higher prices on the stolen parts.


The problem with the gangsters was that during the early 1970’s, the Chicago Outfit was recovering from an “earth-shaking era” which was caused by all of the previous attacks made by the FBI and so the bad boys mostly concentrated on their operations in Las Vegas, Nevada. But back home, they still maintained their connections in politics, labor field, gambling and loan sharking and obviously not all of the members from the crime organization had their shares in casinos around the country but instead they had to find a way to make more money with the help of “new” lucrative schemes such as the chop shop business. So, with the help of the unusual high prices of auto parts and repairs, made the dealing in stolen parts quite profitable for the Chicago Outfit. According to some reports, from the time period between 1968 and 1973, over 120,000 stolen cars went through these so-called Outfit chop shops.


Now back to Catuara’s crew. One of the main extortionists Sam Annerino started his criminal career from former boxer to loan shark collector and ended up as a professional hitman for Catuara and the Outfit. Under Catuara’s rule, he was also involved in extortion and fencing stolen merchandise. Once, Annerino administrated a heavy beating on an Oak Park trucking executive, with the intention to extort $5,000 from him and later a federal appeals court overturned Annerino's conviction for assault. In private life Annerino had a very bad temper and was known to be a very violent individual, meaning if some people didn’t pay up, they usually ended up with a bullet in their legs or arms. According to one story, this guy was known for always carrying a hitman‘s “emergency tool kit” in his car trunk because he never knew when he might needed. Things like surgical gloves, gun with a fingerprint resistant tape, knife, wire, knuckle brass etc. So when guy like Annerino showed up in front of some chop shop operator or car thief, there were no doubts, everybody instantly paid up.


Annerino also had a partner in crime known as Mike Antonelli, who was also known as hothead and a feared hitman because he always carried a gun with a silencer. He was known for shooting people just for looking at him the wrong way. Antonelli’s other job was transporting stolen cars from Indiana to Chicago for example, usually filled with car titles, thus filling Catuara’s pockets with huge amounts of cash. There was also another guy known as Richard Chiarenga who constantly accompanied Antonelli and who also transported stolen cars and car titles. Secretly or allegedly without Catuara’s knowledge but with Annerino’s approval, Antonelli and Chiarenga used and also sold narcotics on the side.


Next was Guido Fidanzi, another ruthless enforcer for the crew but with a little sense for business. If Fidanzi stood in front of you, it was the appearance of a short and stocky guy, always wearing a black short-sleeve sports shirt, black slacks, and black shoes, with flashes from the big diamond that he wore on his left pinkie. He owned a gas station known as Malizia Service which was fronted by his brother-in-law Tony Renzetti. But even though he tried to portrait himself as clean businessman, by the end of the day Fidanzi was a real scumbag. Once, there was this guy who gave him $7,500 with a promise of a $50,000 loan from Fidanzi himself but in the end, the poor guy never saw his $7,500 again, nor the alleged loan. Back in 1968, Fidanzi was convicted for income tax evasion and was sentenced to 5 years in prison but before the trial, according to news reports, Fidanzi threatened some of the witnesses by saying that he was going to shoot them in the head if found guilty. But according to numerous sources, the jurors weren’t the only ones who received threats, but also Fidanzi sent a message to Catuara and the Outfit that his wife and family should be taken care of while he’s in prison. After all, that’s how things go in the Mob right? If not, he might start talking. Catuara held to his promise and in the end Fidanzi was found guilty and served only 3 years because he was paroled in 1971. Fidnazi owned a fraudulent mortgage company and also worked as collector and extortionist in the chop shop business, but he was considered “the last line of defence” because as I previously stated, he was too much of an unstable, loudmouth, nervous and trigger happy individual or in other words he told everything to anyone, stole everything from anyone and killed anyone and everything.


Next in line, according to level of violent urge within the crew, was William Dauber. This guy was also a nut and killed every possible living thing which has done only a little bit to hurt him and so during his criminal career, he was a suspect in over 25 killings. By now he worked for Catuara but Dauber started his criminal career like every other bully on the streets by beating people for cash and later graduated in the car theft business alongside Albert Tocco. Together they were arrested with Buonomo and Accettura in the previous car theft ring case but since his old pal was in jail, his allegiance belonged to Catuara, for now. But all of these Outfit companions knew Dauber’s darker side and so they started using him as collector and hitman for the organization before his involvement in the chop shop racket. Dauber loved the action of stealing a car but he also owned few chop shops around the south suburbs. With the help of his two main chop shop operators Bob Brecka and Bob Ostrander, they managed to distribute a high volume of stolen parts in Indiana, Kentucky and Florida. The problem was that Dauber was a serial killer and so many times when he and few of his guys went to “work”, usually the owner of the car was left with a bullet in his groin. Once, Dauber and three of his cohorts transported a stolen car from Indiana to Chicago after pumping few bullets in the owner’s chest. Dauber was the guy who would’ve good- naturedly approach you, then put one arm around you in a friendly gesture, and in the end pull out a gun and shoot you with his free hand.


Dauber had three partners in crime, one was Peter Bresinelli, the other was John Schnadenberg and the last was Steve Ostrowsky. Bresinelli was a car thief and he mostly acted as Dauber’s chauffer and sort of a bodyguard but together they also operated a chop shop in Blue Island. Schnadenberg was another of Dauber’s everyday companions who always helped his mentor in chopping cars and also in executing people. In fact, Schnadenberg was Dauber’s brother-in-law and was always treated, mostly by Dauber, as the dumbest person within the group. For example, one day Schnadenberg was waiting with a semi-truck for his partners Dauber and Ostrowsky, who in turn were delivering a huge stash of stolen car parts. Now, all of the parts were stashed over a huge sheet metal which was about to be transferred from Ostrowsky’s truck into Schnadenberg’s semi-truck. But three was a problem because the floor levels of both trucks were at different heights and now they had to use boards so they can slide the metal sheet up into the semi-truck. So according to some accounts, Dauber told Schnadenberg to find some good boards so they can make the slide. Well the other problem was that the boards which were found by Schnadenberg, were not strong at all, and on halfway up the boards snapped and the whole merchandise fell on the ground. In a matter of seconds, Dauber’s face turned red, his eyes became like the ones of a shark, pulled out his gun and started chasing Schnadenberg around the trucks for nearly an hour while threatening to kill him. In the end, Ostrowsky and another of their associate managed to calm Dauber and managed to convince him to forgive Schnadenberg and let him live his remaining days.


Steve Ostrowsky was different, meaning he operated his own salvage yard known as the South Chicago Auto Parts & Wrecking Co. at 7370 South Chicago Avenue, and he also operated his own car theft ring and chop shop operations. Inside his salvage yard, Ostrowsky had a long line-private party telephone line from which he requested specific car parts from chop shops or illegal salvage yards around the state of Illinois. If somebody requested for an expensive part, Ostrowsky immediately announced over the lines that he had the part in stock, and even though in reality he didn’t, he still would arrange for a quick delivery. Ostrowsky allegedly had costumers calling from repair shops all the way from Missouri, Pennsylvania and Tennessee and delivered stolen auto parts to various body repair shops all around the Midwest. In other words, Ostrowsky had the game locked down by also corrupting the head of the South Side stolen car unit William Basketfield and Police Lieutenant Robert Fischer by paying them from $200 to $300 dollars a week. Later Basketfield was charged for operating a tire-stealing ring but he was not convicted. He was fired from his job and became an Ostrowsky employee at his auto parts store. But the darkest “secret” was that Ostrowsky was also a killer and there were many situations where his people had cut up the cars that alleged informants were previously murdered in. In fact, he was a former biker with a good personality and charisma, and above all killer instinct, something which the other members of the crew could’ve only dreamed of.


Ostrowsky had two main operators or associates, Harry Holzer, a known chop shop operator from the Calumet City area, and Harry Carlson, another experienced car theft operator. Now Harry was the son of James Holzer, the guy who worked with Carl Fiorito in the car theft racket back in the late 1940’s. Because of his family’s history and connections, Holzer knew ever possible car thief on the South and West Side and constantly paid them for their jobs. He usually gave the thieves $100 to steal and deliver a whole car, and $500 if the car was brought chopped up. Each day, Holzer and his partner in crime Ostrowsky would compile a list of the parts they needed and at the end of each work day they would give their “street workers” a list of cars which were to be stolen that evening. The duo was also able to increase their profits by dealing primary with body switch shops, since many of the salvage yards requested only two or three parts while the body switch operator was always interested in purchasing all of the parts from the dismantled car.


Ostrowsky and Holzer both even came up with the same crazy but clever idea by building an exact replica of a Chicago Police Department detective’s car in case they had problems in getting the targeted car from certain location. For example, they would drive down the Gold Coast area and drop their thief near some garage and while he was doing his job, the two “detectives” in the fake police car made it quite apparent to the residents that the city’s finest were there to protect them. In other words, Ostrowsky and Holzer sometimes acted as police protection for their own thieves. Another so-called funny story was when a Cadillac dealership in South Chicago, called upon Ostrowsky and Holzer and asked for four doors from a Cadillac. The other day, one of their car choppers brought the identical doors that came of the same Cadillac and unknowingly those same doors that originally came of that Caddy ended up back on it. Now, the woman had came down for her car and she immediately recognized her doors by opening one of the ashtrays and there were her cigarettes with her lipstick smudges all over them. The poor woman was instantly silenced by not charging her anything or maybe they gave her some money or even maybe they mentioned few underworld names.

Next was Richard Ferraro who also had the car theft business in his blood because he had a huge reputation as a car thief and chop shop figure. Ferraro operated a huge salvage yard named the Statewide Auto Wrecking Co. in Calumet City and he also had more than few chop shops around the same area. Even though this guy was taking seriously every order from the mobsters and at the same time made for them a lot of cash, but the thing was that he was an associate of the Outfit and so he had the “privilege” to pay street-tax for operating. As I previously stated that during this period all of the Outfit’s members collected street tax from various businessmen including chop shop owners but in some cases some of the operators made deals with the mobsters and became their front men, like Ferraro. But Ferraro also had a secret which was a business of his on the side and that business was narcotics or in other words, heroin. He had few guys working for him and sold small packages of H from the chop shops and some sources say that he also sometimes used the transportation of stolen cars for transporting narcotics around the country. Also, all of these names in the chop shop business such as Ferraro, Dauber, Ostrowsky or Holzer took shares which estimated from $5,000 to $15,000 a week, from the chop shop job alone, thus making between $150,000 and $200,000 a year, and as for the rest of the millions of dollars which were taken from the street tax, most of it went into the pockets of Catuara and the bosses. So this particular highly lucrative chop shop crew was something that the world has never ever seen before during that time which later will become the main reason for a quite bloody conflict between some of the members of Chicago’s crime syndicate.


So during this period the crew’s so-called “street workers” continued with their job by usually grabbing new luxury cars from shopping malls with the help of innocent-looking tow trucks who supposedly took away disabled cars and obviously nobody noticed anything unusual. But this time to re-sell the stolen car motors, the thieves had to file down the car motor number because it must appear in all auto and truck vehicle forms, a problem for which of course they needed corrupt officials. According to some independent sources that during this period the chop shop and auto-theft rackets were so big that even people from high government levels were allegedly involved in the scheme. According to one story, during the 1970’s some Chicago Outfit higher-ups had close connections to people who worked at the office of Illinois Secretary of State Alan Dixon who was known for allegedly chasing big time criminals in the car theft business. In fact, Jimmy Catuara’s son worked as assistant at Dixon’s office and so their main job was to arrange for the bad guys to have car title and license registrations so that the feds could not trace the license plates during their surveillances. Allegedly there was a meeting between some of the biggest chop shop owners, including Outfit associates and one representative from Dixon’s office and on this particular meeting, auto parts prices were made up and territories were also divided up among the owners.


By this time organized car theft became potentially violent and deadly, and this aspect was captured in the history of this particular criminal faction and that is why now I want to show you the real dark side of the group, or as I previously stated that this will be the bloodiest chapter of this historical story on Chicago’s auto-theft racket. Since the formation of the crew, which occurred somewhere around the late 1960’s, there were always some conflicts between members of that same faction and a lot of people were killed because of those same conflicts. My personal belief is that some of the main conflicts were the forbidden ventures, such as informing to the police or selling narcotics and above all, street tax collection, which was a huge amount of cash for some of the operators. Now, for those who resisted paying to the organization or looked suspicious, the Outfit always enjoyed in making them an examples. But the bottom line of all problems was obviously the greed for the all mighty dollar which came from the highly lucrative chop shop business.


The first guy to go was Ostrowsky’s close associate Harry Carlson. Now, Carlson was half-owner of the Mackinaw Auto Wrecking Company at 8814 Mackinaw Av. and the other half was owned by Ostrowsky and together they were involved in their multi-million dollar car theft ring and chop shop business. Carlson also had a older brother named Norman who also was involved in the chop shop business through a firm of his known as South City Auto Rebuilders at 8529 Colfax Av. Carlson’s only connection to the Outfit was Ostrowsky, and so after a while the latter came to Carlson and told him that he had to give a larger part from his share to the crime syndicate. But Carlson refused to pay and blamed Ostrowsky about the situation. When Ostrowsky came to Catuara with the negative answer, the old mobster immediately issued a “contract” on Carlson’s life. The “lucky” guy who received the murder contract was of course Ostrowsky since he was the closest to Carlson and received a chance to prove himself to the organization.


On July 6, 1969, Carlson entered his car which was parked in front of the home that he shared with his brother at 7536 Constance Av. When he turned on the ignition key suddenly the whole car blew up, thus breaking every possible window on the nearby cars and houses. It appeared that the explosion was caused by dynamite bomb, which had been planted under the hood of Carlson's car, because the whole thing was ripped apart. Carlson was immediately rushed to Jackson Park hospital, but there wasn’t much hope for the poor guy because his body was covered with dozen very deep cuts and his right leg was nearly severed. He died few hours later. The cops later found out that somebody planted four dynamite sticks under the hood and it was probably a syndicate operation. After his death and because of his car theft record, auto theft detectives decided to search Carlson’s garage and they managed to find a huge quantity of auto grills, headlights, windshields, and other auto accessories. From this point on the cops decided to connect Ostrowsky with the case, and he immediately was arrested and brought for questioning at the station. The gangster was questioned for several days but as usual, the cops couldn’t get a thing out of him and so he was released.


Next on the “list” was Robert Pronger who was a Blue Island race track driver with a lot of adrenalin floating through his veins. He was deeply involved in the chop shop business and paid his alleged street tax to Ostrowsky and Dauber. Pronger owned a huge salvage yard with his younger brother John and together they had an arrest record for stealing cars since the mid 1940’s. The brothers first came to the attention of the public and the Mob in 1946 when they were arrested on charges of trying to steal the car of nationally famous Chicago bandleader Art Kassel. Later the younger Pronger was twice convicted on charges of transporting stolen cars from Chicago across the Indiana state line to be resold, thus making hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Mob. The problem now was that Robert Pronger, or best known as Bob, was under federal subpoena regarding the chop shop racket, a situation which became quite dangerous for him. So like any other criminal who was the victim of extortion by other more dangerous criminals, Pronger was warned several times by Dauber or Ostrowsky to keep his mouth shut and pay his street tax. There were even few unsuccessful attempts on his life in just one month but than again, Pronger made a mistake by asking a lot of questions on the wrong places and in the wrong time. On June 17, 1971, during the morning hours Robert Pronger went for breakfast to his favourite restaurant on Chicago’s South Side and after that he vanished from the face of the earth and was never seen or anyone ever heard from him ever again. Story goes that he was killed on some unknown location by Dauber and Ostrowsky and after that his body was placed in car and than crashed in some car wreckage facility but ten days later on June 27, a decomposed body was found in Indiana and everybody thought that it was Pronger, however 24 hours later after the finding and before the making of dental records, the body was unusually ordered to be cremated. I hardly believe that this was Pronger’s body because the body couldn’t be that much decomposed in such a short time period like ten days.


Now, remember when I previously stated about Guido Fidanzi’s alleged threats towards Catuara about taking care of his family while he was gone? Well as I said he was paroled in 1971 and Catuara kept his promise. But in February, 1972, the government charged Catuara, Dauber and Fidanzi, again, in a tax fraud case. Since Fidanzi was in charge of the operation, he again started making threats that somebody instead should take the rap for him because he just got out of jail. So Fidanzi decided to give the feds few specks of information just lure them and to make them his protection. But as I previously stated, Fidanzi was a sort of “Mad Sam DeStefano” type of guy who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, loved the attention and was known for making a lot of noise and complaints, all day long. The problem was because of his bad behaviour, Fidanzi had lost his protection from the feds which immediately became his death sentence. The other reason for giving away the contract for Fidanzi’s life was his connections to Richard Cain a.k.a. Scalzetti, another member of the Outfit with close business relations to self-exiled boss Sam Giancana. Fidanzi and Cain knew each other since their stay in prison and were paroled the same year but the problem was that Cain had bad reputation among the new top administration and they also wanted him dead. Story goes that Cain together with Fidanzi planned to get involved in the narcotics business with the help of the car theft out-of-state transportation business.


So there were many reasons for the tragedy which occurred on August 8, 1972, when 45 year old Guido Fidanzi entered his gasoline service station to visit his brother-in-law Tony Renzetti and talk business. A costumer came and Renzetti came out of the station to put some gas in the costumer’s car. Suddenly a late model Chrysler, gold in colour, pulled up on the other side of the gas pumps with a driver holding a handkerchief over his face and yelled "Get down!" Renzetti threw himself flat on the concrete and a man got out of the car and walked toward the station’s office where Fidanzi waited. Inside the office there was a telephone repairman at work, one customer sat at the desk and another one sat on the side. Fidanzi stood, looking out thru the plate glass at the cars in front but caught the killer’s eye. The man whipped out a white handkerchief and held it over the lower part of his face while with his left arm and elbow he shoved the door open. His right hand drew a .22 caliber automatic from under his coat and Fidanzi finally realized on what was going on, and allegedly muttered "Oh, God.” The first shot missed him and hit the cash register and suddenly the telephone repairman and the two customers hit the floor. Fidanzi ran in panic for the washroom, which was just few feet away, but in such a short distance nine bullets managed to enter his body. Fidanzi, while in great pain, tried to bolt the door but the gunman was already standing with his gun over Fidanzi’s head and fired two more fatal rounds. After that the hitman calmly walked back to the car and got in while the driver started the motor and sped west in 14th Street. That was the end for Guido Fidanzi.


More than a month after the slaying of Fidanzi, Dauber and Ostrowsky again saw a new couple of potential victims, which allegedly might’ve endangered their car theft operations. Two of Dauber’s associates who operated in South Bend, Indiana were used car salesmen Mike Ragan and Roger Croach who operated their own “body switch” scheme. The method of "body switch" requires taking the frame of the totalled car and using parts from the stolen car to replace the damaged parts and make the car usable, in other words, again nothing new. The vehicle may be further disguised by mixing and matching interiors, engines, and other parts. This poses a serious safety hazard for the innocent end purchasers since the body switching does not necessarily comply with all standards of repair and inspection, and the purchasers seldom know the vehicle was damaged in another jurisdiction.


The problem was on September 2, 1972, Roger Croach’s used-car lot fencing body-switch cars was raided by the feds and everybody was arrested. By now, Dauber was a killer who constantly fed his mind with violent paranoia, thus making the ultimate mistake of killing anyone who he thought might’ve been an informer. So because of the raid, Dauber thought that Croach and Ragan both might talk, which was absolutely untrue, and so fed by the constant paranoia, he quickly decided to take matters, again, in his own hands. That same day or later in the evening, one of Dauber’s partners in the car theft business Donald Boye called Croach and told him that he and Dauber will pick him up to do a job. But Dauber never picked up Boye but instead he went straight to Croach. After that, Dauber and Boye met up and Dauber told his associate that he had to whack Croach and that he had to blown his brains all over the car. So According to some reports, Dauber had 'knocked off' Croach because he thought that Croach couldn't handle the government’s heat. Later Dauber and two of his associates searched the trunk of Croach's car and found various items. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they divided these items among themselves and were instructed by Dauber: “Whatever you got there, throw them in the river' or 'the creek.” The next day Dauber, together with John Schnadenberg, picked up Mike Ragan in their 1971 Buick Electra for an alleged meeting and during their ride, Dauber shot Ragan three times in the head and threw his lifeless body near a sandy road in Starke County.


But even with the alleged silencing of their former associates, Dauber and Ostrowsky still couldn’t find the real so-called “rat” which was still hiding within their organization and went by the name of Alex Jaroszewski. This guy came under the auspices of Ostrowsky and graduated in becoming a professional car thief and chop shop operator but the problem was that he knew too many secrets. In September, 1972, the feds approached Jaroszewski and convinced him that Ostrosky and Dauber were allegedly planning to kill him. From that point on, Jaroszewski continuously cooperated with the government. That same month, Jaroszewski gave information to the feds that in fact Jimmy Catuara’s 1971 Cadillac Eldorado was previously stolen, or in other words, Catuara was driving a stolen car. One day, Catuara told Ostrowsky and Dauber that he wanted to purchase a 1971 Cadillac Eldorado and so they immediately purchased a frame, a damaged car from an insurance company. Later, a couple of their thieves had stolen the same model of Cadillac, placed it in a garage, switched bodies and after that, they placed different tags. In the end, the car was nicely cleaned up and was given to Ostrowsky or Dauber, who in turn delivered it to Catuara. So after Jaroszewski gave this information to the feds, they immediately arrested Catuara, brought him to the station and indicted him for possession of a stolen vehicle but during the trial, Catuara was acquitted.


The main problem now was that Catuara now knew for sure that there was no way for feds to know about the stolen vehicle without an inside information. And so, at the beginning of March, 1973, the real informer revealed himself by appearing in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, with a hood over his face and an army of U.S. marshals. Jaroszewski spilled the beans in the court, while telling the truth and pointing his finger at Dauber, Ostrowsky, and two of their associates John Schnadenberg, and Joseph Marek. And so with the help of Jaroszewski’s detailed stories, on March 30, 1973, Dauber and Ostrowsky and the two alleged killers Schnadenberg and Marek were found guilty in federal court for violating the federal interstate stolen vehicle statute and were sentenced to five years in prison, plus fines raging from $3,000 to $5,000. Although some of the previous slayings were mentioned during the trial, they were never convicted for the murders, even though they were caught in the stolen car of the late Croach.


But another “problem”, which occurred for the crew that same year, mainly for Catuara, was the parole and the release from jail of the group’s former member and alleged organizer of the chop shop racket in the south suburbs, Albert Tocco. This guy expected to bring back his old business under his rule again but the thing was that Catuara resisted since he was a senior mobster and Tocco was not. Catuara already had some previous “bad memories” after the death of his boss Frank LaPorte because he expected to be nominated as the new boss of the Chicago Heights faction but the idea went down the toilet when Al Pilotto was elected as the new crew boss. That obviously formed some kind of hatred between Catuara and Pilotto, and I personally believe that Tocco used the situation and slowly prepared for a conflict. But my personal belief is that Tocco and Pilotto couldn’t make a move without the backing of the Outfit’s top administration. And I also believe that they received the backing mainly by one of the Outfit’s top territorial bosses known as Joey Lombardo. He was the crime boss of the so-called Grand Avenue crew and was one of the rising stars on the Outfit’s administration. So with younger and at the same time hungrier guys such as Tocco and Lombardo, the streets of Chicago were ready for another bloody mob war. By now all of the previously mentioned murder “contracts” were sanctioned by Catuara himself, who had authority beyond Dauber and Ostrowsky, but now the situation was about to make an opposite turn.


The next year, in 1974, Dauber, Ostrowsky and their two associates successfully appealed their case, meaning the appellant court overturned their convictions. In 1975, three of the defendants were released, but not Dauber because he had another conviction which was mail fraud and he was kept in jail until 1976. As for Ostrowsky, he was back out on the streets and back in the car theft business but now he had few problems. The first problem and the deadliest one, was the previous situation with his close, but now former associate and informer Jaroszewski. In the underworld, there’s an unwritten rule on when a guy who knows people, introduces a new guy to these same people, then the guy who made the introduction is responsible for the new guy’s actions. In other words, Ostrowsky was seen by the bosses as responsible for the damaging actions made by his close associate Jaroszewski. The second problem for poor Ostrowsky was that now he had to choose between Catuara and Tocco because of the newly formed conflict between the two mobsters. Ostrowsky knew that his partner in crime William Dauber had a little respect for Catuara and that he always followed Tocco but because of his prison term, Dauber had no chances in going alone against Catuara. And so, Ostrowsky made few fatal mistakes by staying in his old spot and operating a “forbidden” business, thus starting of a new conflict. In fact, Ostrowsky couldn’t choose the rival faction at all because of the first problem which I previously mentioned.


Many Outfit historians believe that Ostrowsky was the first victim of the conflict between Tocco and Catuara but I believe that the information is not true. My personal belief is that the first victim of the conflict was Harry Holzer, the guy that I previously mentioned as Ostrowsky associate with huge chop shop operation in the Calumet City area. Holzer was quite an earner for Ostrowsky and the Outfit but later for unknown reasons, he transferred his operations to the small town of Fennville, Michigan, located around Lake Michigan. He lived with his new wife 31 years old Linda Turner Holzer and the couple resided in a new home in a secluded area near the Kalamazoo River. The nearest intersection is 130th avenue and 60th street, approximately three miles east of the Allegan county community of Douglas. Over there Holzer operated a new salvage yard called the Fennville Auto Parts with another business partner of his known as Dave Domberg Jr. of south suburban Palos Park, Illinois. So according to one story, Domberg was a huge player in the narcotics business between Illinois and Michigan, which I personally believe was the main reason for Holzer’s relocation to Fennville. The story went like the usual, Domberg had unlimited supply to narcotics and Holzer had good underworld connections in Chicago, meaning Ostrowsky and other people close to the Outfit.


But somebody talked about the operation, not to the feds but worse, to the Outfit’s administration and so on June 5, 1975, Holzer and his wife Linda, both were found shot to death in the dining room of their home as they sat at their kitchen table. There were no signs of breaking and entering or struggle, which was obvious that the victims have known their assailant. One of the proofs was the many cans of beer and uneaten sandwiches which were on the dining room table. Both victims suffered multiple gun shot wounds in their heads and torsos but their pet poodle was unharmed and although the home appeared to have been ransacked, valuable items such as five television sets, gold chains and cash were untouched. One of the suspects was a Chicago policeman Edward McCabe, who resigned in 1976 while under investigation for the killings. According to one story, McCabe was previously under the payroll of Holzer and Domberg.


The next high profile victim was Walter Wellington, another Ostrowsky and Catuara associate in the car theft and allegedly narcotics business in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Wellington’s salvage operation in Mount Pleasant was part of a car theft ring that stretched to Chicago, Atlanta and Denver. According to government reports, Wellington frequently flew to Chicago in his own plane and attended meetings with many shady figures, meaning Outfit associates. The same sources say that Ostrowsky had made constant visits to Wellington in Mount Pleasant regarding the car theft ring, but he also visited Bloomfield and elsewhere in Iowa. Obviously Catuara and Ostrowsky were running a huge car theft operation in Iowa, an area which was under the Outfit’s rule since the mid 1930’s, and Tocco and Lombardo knew where would hurt the most. It was estimated that up to 10 luxury cars were “handled" each week, giving the Wellingtons $50,000 in business weekly, easily. Once, Wellington managed to sell 20 tractors worth $20,000 each for $5,000 apiece, with delivery guaranteed within 30 minutes. But on September 6, 1975, Walter Wellington allegedly killed himself by mistake while placing a bomb behind a bank. One story goes that after placing the bomb, he and his brother Silas Wellington joined their wives at a restaurant. Later Walter got nervous about the bomb not exploding on time ' and was afraid someone might accidentally get hurt. Immediately, together with his brother, Walter drove to the bank area and he insisted on inspecting the bomb, saying: "I planted it, I'll go get it" and as he leaned over the bomb through the rear view mirror of his car, the bomb went off and, according to his brother "All I saw was him going up in the air."


Now this is the part where some strange things occurred like for example, Wellington’s brother Silas said he didn't get out of the car to help his own brother but instead he drove back to the restaurant and told the wives about what has happened. Now like every normal brother or normal human being, I believe that Silas should’ve at least go at the scene and just to throw a glimpse at his brother, just to see if he was in one piece. The second “mistake” is for not immediately calling an ambulance or the cops, but instead in the role of a scared little girl, he ran to the restaurant to inform the wives. I personally don’t believe in the story because of these next examples. While they were at the station, Wellington’s so-called family have told officials that they had been threatened with cryptic phone calls and messages by “unknown” individuals. According to prime investigator for the case Vagueness Redman, he said "I don't know, but there are so many loose ends, so many unexplained things. Too much to wrap up in a neat package” He also asked on why Wellington's tattooed right forearm was missing and why there were no lower teeth to compare. Redman also noted that a waitress saw Wellington wearing a yellow shirt and white shoes shortly before the blast, while the autopsy report said that the victim wore a brown shirt and pants. In reality, the victim’s top buttons of the trousers were unfastened which suggests that if the victim was already dead or unconscious, his abductor would be in a hurry and wouldn't bother with zippers and buttons.


The investigator also said that someone other than Silas and Walter might’ve been present when the bomb went off. He said he believed a body was propped on the bomb, which was detonated by remote control by a person shielded by wall. "Would anyone go over to examine a bomb in the pitch dark without a flash light?” Redman asked. He noted no remnant of a flashlight was found, but a piece of the battery used in the bomb was found on the roof of Silas' car. Redman also noted that no bomb residue was found atop of Silas' car. "Who would explode a bomb which would draw people and cops like flies - to get a state trooper out of his house so hit men from Chicago could get him?" Redman asked. There was also one witness who saw Wellington before the explosion and testified that he saw the victim in his car and also said that his face was swollen and bruised. On this, Redman suggested that perhaps Wellington was previously beaten or tortured so they can find out where stashed his money. Now if you ask me I believe that this hit wasn’t sanctioned by the Outfit’s top administration but instead “someone”, meaning Lombardo and Tocco, tried to make things look like an accident and so everything can be as it was.


But that method wasn’t used in this next example. In September, 1976, the feds received info that the Outfit was planning to kill Ostrowsky and he was personally warned by the agents but in his own gangster attitude he refused their help. So on October 5, 1976, Ostrowsky parked his Cadillac outside his auto wrecking and rebuilding plant about 10 a. m. when suddenly a white van drove past Ostrowsky's car and a semi-automatic rifle was shoved through an open passenger window and seven shots were fired while fatally striking Ostrowsky in the chest and left side. The van which was used in the hit, sped away after the shooting and later was found abandoned about half a mile away from the murder scene. Ostrowsky’s murder was a huge blow in the face for James Catuara and a huge win for Tocco because from this point on, every member fell easily on Tocco’s sword.

I believe that Tocco and Pilotto found Catuara’s so-called “soft spot” which was narcotics. Even though the younger generation within the Outfit was slowly coming up the ladder and were making the big buck for their bosses, the problem was that some of the old guys, who were still around, sometimes forgot about the cash and became disgusted with some of the members’ wrong choices. During this period this so-called chop shop crew operated one of the most lucrative illegal operations in the Chicago area but there were few “small” problems. I don’t know if you noticed but most of these crew members that I previously mentioned such as Annerino or Ferraro were involved in the narcotics business, including everyday usage of heroin and cocaine. Also, according to the previous examples, some of these guys were forming a narcotics smuggling network around the country with the help of the car theft business. With the transportation of stolen cars, they also smuggled narcotics. I’m not sure if Catuara knew or approved the dealing in narcotics but I’m sure that he didn’t do a damn thing about.


Since they were closely connected to the Outfit, by this time crime leaders such as Tony Accardo, Joey Aiuppa and Gus Alex were against the selling of narcotics, especially about everyday usage. The old guys didn’t understand the fact that this was a new era of disco music, narcotics and sex, but they understood the idea that the feds had constant view over the Outfit’s operations. The so-called “base” of most of these murders was the paranoia created by informants and drug peddlers. The Outfit was a murder machine and it didn’t take long for the bosses to order a murder spree such as this one. The old guys didn’t do drugs and back in the days they might’ve taken more than few envelopes from the racket but now that deal was over. And again the other so-called territory boss who supported the “clean-up” was the leader of the Grand Avenue crew Joey Lombardo. These guys sticked to the old ways such as gambling, extortion, loan sharking and labor racketeering. You see, in the mind of a gangster such as Lombardo, the old guys were right. I mean, the usage and selling of narcotics made these guys unstable and unsecure to be involved in the Outfit’s everyday affairs and to be involved in everyday action like that, you need to be a very cold or emotionless individual with clear mind and lots of blind loyalty. So now the murder contracts were passed from Aiuppa, who previously consulted with Accardo, to Jack Cerone, who in turn gave them to Lombardo and Tocco’s boss Al Pilotto, who in turn gave some of the contracts to William Dauber, who was freshly released from prison in 1976, or some went to the Grand Avenue crew or the newly formed “Wild Bunch” group from the Cicero area, who also supported the takeover.


By “coincidence” the cleanup began with few of Sam Annerino’s associates in the car theft business, who probably had involvement in narcotics, such as 47 year old Norman Lang of Munster, Indiana, who was an operator of a Hammond used car agency and was one of Annerino’s key players in the car theft business in that area, and on January 13, 1977, Lang was shot to death several times in Calumet City. Next on the “hit list” was 36 years old Richard Ferraro who disappeared on June 13, 1977, and it was believed to be murdered. Police found Ferraro's 1977 Lincoln, with the keys in the ignition, parked outside his Statewide Auto Wrecking Co. Later it was learned that his body was stuffed into a junked car that was then crushed into scrap by a metal compactor. Ferraro apparently had taken over as Catuara's stolen-auto supervisor from Steven Ostrowsky, but sadly it didn’t last long. Two days later, on June 15, 1977, one of Ferraro’s close associates in the car theft business John Theo was found with two shotgun wounds to the head in the back seat of a car parked at 1700 N. Cleveland Ave. Theo’s arrest record dated since 1961 when he was arrested for being involved in a burglary ring, in which he often used disguises but his demise obviously came from his partnership with Ferraro.


Another of Annerino’s closest associates in the car theft and narcotics businesses 27 year old John Schneider, whose partially decomposed body was found on July 3, 1977, shot once in the head with a .25 caliber, wrapped in plastic and thrown in the trunk of a rented Chevrolet Caprice which was parked at O'Hare Airport. Another nude and decomposed body popped up at the same location 9 days later, on July 12, 1977, and this time it was 34 years old Earl Abercrombie Jr., a convicted auto thief who was known as another Annerino associate. Abercrombie’s mother said that her son disappeared on July 7, on his way to work, meaning his body stayed in the trunk for a week until some of the attendants felt the “funny” smell. Abercrombie had also a very rich arrest record, mostly for peddling stolen cars but it was also believed that he was deeply involved in the narcotics business, probably with Catuara’s or in this case, Annerino’s crew, which I believe was the main reason for his demise.


The next missing figure became another Annerino and Ferraro “involved in god knows what” associate, 46 year old James Palaggi. This guy moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, but came back to Illinois for another reason which was some unfinished business to take care of for Catuara and Annerino. But few days before the discovery of his body, his wife reported him missing. When the cops found him, he was wrapped in green furniture pads in the back of a pickup truck parked on a north side street. He had been shot once in the center of the forehead and three shell casings from a .32-caliber automatic handgun were found near the body. It was impossible to tell if the other two bullets had entered Palaggi because the body was too badly decomposed. The names of murdered victims seemingly dropped on daily basis, but they were the only things that always changed, and the exact details too, but it was always the same story: A man was found in a trunk, or an alley, or a car somewhere, always several days after disappearing, always very dead. In some of the previous examples we can see that car trunks became quite popular among the Outfit’s hitmen, and became a style know as “trunk music”.


So now the next in line was Catuara’s last “right-hand man” Sam Annerino. On July 25, 1977, 31 year old Annerino was slain by a masked gunman who fired five shotgun blasts into him at 4:20 p.m., seconds after he had left a furniture store at 10550 S. Cicero Av., in Oak Lawn. Later an informant told the police that the late Annerino recently bought a 40-foot cabin cruiser, the Honey Bear, which moored at Burnham Harbor. The informant said that two hours after Annerino's slaying someone entered the boat "and cleaned it out." Investigators said that it was possible Annerino was either keeping cash, narcotics, papers or ledgers there relating to the auto theft racket. Police said that one early lead that did not develop was the license number on the car used by Annerino's killers, which had been supplied by witnesses due to the daytime killing but the license number was traced to a fictitious person at a South Side address.


The situation went out of control because in the last 6 or 7 years, more than a dozen murder “contracts” were given out by the Outfit’s top administration, including the contract on Charles Nicoletti in March 29, 1977, who I also suspect was killed for supporting the narcotics business. Why would they kill all of their best extortionists and operators? It’s because of street tax? Well that’s a little bit too many examples just to prove a point and to remind the chop shop owners to pay their “debt” to the Outfit. That is why my theory is that some of these Outfit sanctioned murders during this time period were pushed by the allegedly forbidden narcotics racket and the fear of becoming informants.


According to one story, Catuara was allegedly once kidnapped right of the street or in a gangster’s slang, he was taken for a ride by people sent by the bosses, who in turn, with a gun pointed to his head, just gave a warning to the aging gangster to stay out of the whole dirty business and that maybe it was time to retire to Arizona since he had a criminal career of more than 50 years and plus he was in his 70’s. There’s also another story regarding Catuara’s demise and that was the attempted bombing at the home of the head of the secretary of state’s stolen auto detail Vladimir Ivkovich. Since this guy was quite troublesome for Catuara’s car theft and narcotics operations, the old gangster allegedly ordered the bombing. Ivkovich awaken by the barking of his dog during the early morning hours back in July 8, went to the porch of his home and in the dark, he knocked over something which turned out to be a bomb. In fact, the accidental kick defused the bomb and didn’t go off. I really don’t have a clue if Catuara respected the alleged warning or allegedly ordered the bombing, but all I know is that on July 28, 1978, during the morning hours, the old gangster sat in his red Cadillac at the corner of Ogden Avenue and Hubbard Street, which was his old stomping ground, and allegedly waited for an associate. At exactly at 7 a.m. two assassins ran up to his car and fired at him from both front windows, thus filling the gangster with a huge amount of hot led. Even though fatally wounded with blood squirting from both sides of the neck, Catuara still managed to open his door, get out of the car and sprawled face down on the street. Suddenly one of the assailants walked over to Catuara and pumped one last shot into the mobster’s back.


What ever was the reason for Catuara’s murder, everybody thought that this was the end of a quite large saga of murders regarding the car theft racket or allegedly regarding the narcotics business. All I know is that from this point on, Albert Tocco became the undisputed king of the auto-theft racket in the southern part of the Chicago area and northern Indiana. But as always, all of these murders brought the attention of the media and government and became quite a difficult situation for the Mob. For example, the Chicago Crime Commission in 1978 reported over 40.000 car thefts which meant that a large portion of these thefts went to the chop shops and the operators generated millions of dollars through the years. There have been reports that junk dealers have been forced to pay up to $3,000 a month in tribute, thus making the chop shop hoods a profit of $20 to $30 million a year business only in the Chicago area. That is why some of the younger operators became greedy and thought that if they mixed this huge lucrative operation with the narcotics business, it would’ve been a “great deal”. Also because of all of these killings, the Secretary of State Alan Dixon’s office has realized that they were playing with fire and in the last moment they cut off all of their connections with the chop shop business, thus Dixon himself ordered a crackdown on all junkyards that were suspected of harbouring cars stolen by chop-shop thieves, thus closing down 40 salvage yards around the Chicago area in the process. It was a normal trick, made of turning backs, which was done by every allegedly corrupt politician, during so-called hard times.


The government even organized a senate probe regarding the car theft racket in which they planned to question two main witnesses and a huge number of junkyard dealers in southern Cook County, Will and Kankakee counties, and Lake County in Indiana. However, it was learned during the hearing that one of the witnesses scheduled for questioning was to be the late Jimmy Catuara, who was already forever “silenced” by his peers in the Outfit. But the committee had another far more sensitive witness who agreed to testify while under the witness protection program and that individual was Alex Jaroszewski, again. He again explained his start and involvement in the chop shop business and also explained the specifics of the racket in details. During his testimony he admitted that he never saw the use of guns as prevalent in the car theft business because being a car thief, he felt it was a non-violent crime and allegedly it didn’t hurt anybody except the insurance companies. But later he realized that his whole image of the business went down the toilet because of all of the murders which occurred during his career as a car thief.


Even though the heat was on, the murders continued during the next few years. In 1979, Timothy O'Brien was considered by law enforcement a reputed top figure in the Outfit’s stolen auto parts racket. He had a record of arrests for auto theft going back to 1957 when he was 16, and later he was arrested at his junkyard back in 1977 during a visit there by a Tribune reporter and state and police investigators. Even though he tried to be violent during his arrest and proclaimed his innocence, the investigators managed to find a 1976 Lincoln, which they said had been stolen in Broadview and was cut up in a garage there. After that he was arrested on charges of receiving stolen property. O’Brien was the owner of one of the largest salvage auto parts places known to accept stolen auto parts and had been a prime suspect for many years in the chop shop racket in the Blue Island area. O'Brien was the operator of the Irish Keystone Auto Parts, a junkyard at Clair and Sacramento avenues in Robbins and of another parts storage yard with the same name in Blue Island. Now maybe this guy was also involved in narcotics, which I highly doubt, but because of his jail term the Outfit obviously couldn’t get to him.


I say this because O’Brien used to be a close associate in the car theft and narcotics rackets of the late Richard Ferraro and when he got out of prison, he immediately took Ferraro’s son, Jerry under his auspices. Jerry Ferraro operated a chop shop garage, one block south of O'Brien's junkyard, known as J & A Auto Parts. Also few of O’Brien’s best car thieves were David O’Malley, Tommy Bahrs and the Neviles brothers, Harold and Phillip. The so-called crew leader was O’Malley who in turn was O’Brien’s right-hand man. Usually O’Malley met with O’Brien and received a “steal list” with cars which were ordered by people from the Outfit, who in turn received the orders from famous sport players, musicians, businessmen or even politicians. This was a quite professional auto-theft crew which was mainly involved in stealing luxury cars such as Lincoln Continental, Ford Thunderbird or Mercury Cougars, and each model worth over $10,000.


Even though the boys didn’t want any further narcotics “infections” within the organization, I also believe that O’Brien was killed over another reason which was the street tax racket, because by now the Outfit had bumped off most of their prime operators and since the government heat was on, the street tax became much more precious. It was a very tough period for O’Brien since the Outfit was telling him he had to pay more tax, the government was after him for not paying enough tax, his girlfriend was fooling around with somebody else, and the state was trying to put him out of business. He was under investigation for income tax evasion and was on the brink of indictment by a federal grand jury in Chicago, because on May 18, the police intercepted a truck containing 230 stolen car doors as it left O’Brien’s junkyard. He also faced criminal charges for shooting and critically wounding a man romantically involved with an employee of his Irish Keystone Auto Parts junkyard and on top of that the secretary of states office had initiated action to revoke the licenses for his car parts yards in Robbins and Blue Island. The Outfit also increased the monthly tribute from chop shop operators and story goes that O'Brien balked and threatened to quit. Told he could not quit, O'Brien retaliated by ordering a labor slowdown-stealing fewer cars and thus reducing production. Obviously O’Brien was car thief going mad.


Another problem which occurred just few months before his demise was the arrest of his car theft crew in a federal operation in February, 1979. The crew was arrested in a stakeout while transporting four stolen luxury cars with prices over $13,000, and the feds also found an order list with 120 high-priced cars, many of them had been crossed off. All of the recovered cars were also on the list. The cops also discovered a huge stash of burglary tools and licence plates. Now the investigators immediately connected O’Brien to the case because of his close connection to O’Malley and the boys in the Outfit might’ve seen the potential danger. On top of that, some reports say that O'Brien fancied himself as an "Irish Mobster" who could stand up to the Outfit, such as the infamous Cleveland gangster saga between the Italian Mafia and Irish mobster Danny Greene.


So in a shot time period he received info that a contract was put out on his life and so on May 21, at 1:30 p.m., O’Brien phoned Terry Delaney, chief investigator for the secretary of state, asking for a one-on-one meeting at a "neutral" location. Later that night, around 8 p.m. O’Brien left his house and told his wife that he was going to visit some friend, to whom he complained "I'm being tailed" and from that point on he was not seen alive again. On May 23, an employee of O'Brien's Robbins junkyard reported him missing and later on June 1, 1979, the Blue Island police received an anonymous phone call at 12:30 p.m. saying that a suspicious car was parked on Old Western Avenue in the suburbs. When cops arrived, they found O’Brien’s car and when they opened the trunk, O'Brien's body was lying on its right side and clad in black trousers and a black sports shirt which had been pulled up around his neck. The body was identified through a driver s license which was found in his pocket and a characteristic snake and cross tattoo on his right arm. O’Brien became the 16th victim of the so-called Chicago’s “chop shop wars”, a murder spree which lasted for over a decade.


By now the Chicago Crime Commission reported that a substantial part of the chop shop racket has shifted into northwest Indiana from bases in southern Cook and eastern Will counties because of the government pressure. More than 100 auto chop shop operators, controlled by the Chicago crime syndicate, were thriving in neighbouring Lake County, Indiana, after being pressured out of Illinois by tough state regulations and although the shops were moving to Indiana, still most of the stolen cars come from Illinois. The operators have restricted themselves to barns and other out-of-the-way places south of U. S. Highway 30 and their safest thing was the protection which was given by the local authorities in Lake County via pay offs. Besides in Indiana, many salvage yard owners who previously obtained their chop shop expertise in Chicago, also operated stolen parts operations in Michigan, Iowa and also way down in Florida.


Many Indiana lawmen attempted and sometimes succeeded in curbing many chop shop investigations which were made by the anti-chop task force. The office of Lake County Sheriff Jose Arredondo was very suspicious because of the staff’s history. For example, a woman clerk who worked at the sheriff’s office in the sensitive bureau of identification where the reports were filled, was a known associate of a convicted auto thief. Also the sheriff's brother, Miguel, who headed the sheriff's police force, also had shady connections and history. The feud went on and both government teams accused each other of trying to meddle in their own operations, thus giving the opportunity for the car thieves to operate freely. And as the chop shops moved into northern Indiana, so did the racket-related killings.


Evidence for that was the slaying of Robert Kurowski, a Hammond junk dealer mainly involved in the chop shop business. He was an ex-convict who had served time for burglary and auto theft, and had been under constant surveillance by state and federal agents. Besides stealing and stripping cars out of their parts, Kurowski and one of his associates Robert Hardin worked as enforcers directly under Albert Tocco and William Dauber. The two enforcers had once torched a vice den known as Johnny O's Supper Club, near suburban Lynwood because its owner refused to pay street tax to Tocco. And so a similar mistake was made by Kurowski for not reporting his whole income from the street tax racket to Tocco and the Outfit. On May 24, 1980, Kurowski was walking his horse along a wooded trail near the main highway in Schneider, Indiana, while a hit squad was in waiting for him in a car, and then he suddenly felt six slugs from a 30 caliber rifle entering his body. It was a “bushwacking” right out of the Old West. Three days later, on May 27, 1980, another Kurowski associate in the car theft business and alleged Outfit enforcer in the same area Edelmyro DeJesus was also shot to death by few shotgun blasts in an alley in East Chicago. After the slaying, the cops acknowledged that DeJesus was the main suspect in the murder of Steve Ostrowsky back in 1977.


But soon that hideous bloody circle was about to be completed with this one last hit. By now Outfit enforcer William Dauber was highly regarded within the organization but not within government circles. As any other wild criminal he faced several federal indictments at the time, including concealing cocaine and 11 weapons in their suburban residence in Crete. Another interesting thing was the existence of what investigators dubbed "Dauber's Den", a small hideaway in the basement of the Crete home, where authorities found a reclining chair, a radio device to monitor police calls, and a 9 mm. automatic pistol. Even tough Dauber did a lot of dirty work for the Mob, by the end of the day he was considered expendable by his crime associates because in their eyes, he was a suspect of being an informant. He was suspected of being informant mainly because he had a drinking and narcotics problem and he was a known loudmouth, meaning he bragged about everything. He had been observed drinking heavily in taverns known to be frequented by other mob chop-shop figures, who usually sat at the same table where Dauber told his stories. Albert Tocco respected and protected him but to a certain point because it was reported that on several occasions Tocco have warned Dauber "Stop drinking and running off at the mouth." But the Mob was right because Dauber had been approached by government officials many times seeking his cooperation, and after the cocaine and weapons bust, he agreed to meet with them more than several times. Dauber was playing a dangerous game which made him suspicious in some dangerous circles or in other words, the hunter became the hunted.


Word got out that a vengeance soon would be turned on him, and so Dauber started living in constant fear of retaliation thus leading him to sleep under a bullet-proof blanket, which was made of a tough nylon fiber, and always started his van each morning only by remote control. While riding in his van, he was usually in the company of his chauffeur and last loyal associate Peter Bresinelli with Dauber next to him often carrying a sawed-off shotgun in his lap. Dauber even quietly sold his Crete home and made a huge mistake by selling his late-model van with armour plating on its right side and bullet proof glass. In May, 1980, Dauber had been the intended victim of a hit attempt but had escaped by ducking bullets as he ran into a cornfield near his former home in south suburban Crete. But the Outfit gunmen already devised a plan to hit Dauber on the day of his court appearance after correctly concluding that he would not be armed or travelling in his armour-plated van. So despite his precautions, his luck ran out when on July 2, 1980, a highly skilled, heavily armed hit team from the “Wild Bunch” crew, caught up with Dauber and his wife Charlotte, thus cutting them down with rifle and shotgun fire in a high-speed auto chase on a rural Will County road. The pair was shot with numerous shotgun pellets and approximately 30-caliber rifle bullets, mostly in their heads and upper bodies while in their late-model Oldsmobile Regency. Volunteer firemen had received an anonymous call about a burning van, about 40 minutes after the attack on the Daubers and later the cops found the stolen and burned-out van, about 22 miles east of the scene of the slayings along the Monee-Manhattan Road, which was believed it was used by the hit team.



Dauber

After the death of William Dauber, his old partner in the car theft business Albert Tocco once again became the prime player in the racket. Things were on the up and up in 1982, when Al Pilotto was jailed and Tocco succeeded him as boss of the Chicago Heights crew. During the Outfit’s history, this particular crew never took the leading role for the organization but it was always considered as one of the most powerful and low-key crime factions of the Chicago Mob. By now Tocco already ventured into a “new” scheme known as the garbage business but together with Joey Lombardo, he still had deep ties to the car theft operations, since it was one of his first big time organized crime ventures. One of their guys at the time was Charles Bills, a car theft operator who ran a south suburban chop shop and was responsible for the thefts of more than 700 cars per year. He mainly ran his operation from the Oak Lawn and Blue Island areas with the help of few other chop shop operators such as Donald Sanders and Jerry Rosenstein, the operator of Calumet Auto Wrecking with many connections to various Indiana chop shop owners and shady car dealers.


But this wasn’t Tocco’s or Lombardo’s main car theft operation, instead their prime “pot of gold” was their involvement or a joint operation in a huge, multi-million dollar auto-theft ring which was under the control of the Outfit and stretched in several Midwestern cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiana and Iowa. Back in 1980, the car theft ring managed to steal 48,000 in Illinois and about 30,000 of them in Chicago, where the operation’s headquarters was based and distributed stolen auto-parts throughout the nation. Three of the most notable targets in the Chicago area were the M & M Auto Wreckers at 409 N. Pulaski Rd., M & J Auto Wreckers at 1463-65 E. 130th St., and the Ashland Auto Wreckers, at 9757 S. Commercial Ave. For example, in charge of the M & J Auto Wreckers & Sales was one of Lombardo’s guys known as Mike Chorak, who in fact operated one of the largest chop shop operations on the South Side. Back in 1980, the government wanted to arrest this guy so badly that some of the investigators gave him the famous “lock-step” tactic, a method which almost brought the former Outfit boss Sam Giancana on the verge of insanity. That same year, Chorak filed a suit against the State investigators in an effort to keep them at least 200 feet from his premises. The guy who oversaw Chorak was one member from the West Side area known as Thomas Covello who worked directly under Outfit “capo” Joey Lombardo. The other guy in charge was Chicago police officer Clement Messino who had connections to Tocco through his older brother Chris Messino who was also involved in the car theft racket but mainly worked as one of Tocco’s enforcers.


The hub of the alleged operations was divided in two so-called crews. One crew directed the few Outfit-owned salvage yards which were operated by Covello and one Ralph Mascio, Jr. From there the car thieves were directed to steal mainly particular models of cars in order to supply the yards with a constant supply of parts. Messino’s job was to take the role of a recruiter for the crew and to arrange the theft of specific automobiles through a large cadre of professional auto thieves, such as Joseph Hlavach, Antoine Turner and Vic Meadows. As usual, the cars would generally be stripped prior to any actual contact with the yards, although it was claimed that at times Covello ordered stolen cars directly and had them disassembled at the yards. Both Meadows and Hlavach were alleged to have been involved in the disassembly of automobiles on a sporadic basis. The thieves and disassembly crews would load the parts destined for the yards onto vans, the drivers of which often included Turner and Meadows, and transport the parts to Covello or Mascio during "non-business" hours. Once the parts were at the yards, all vehicle identification numbers would be removed or obscured and the parts would be sorted based upon type and, for body parts, colour. The thieves and the deliverers generally received check from Covello or Mascio, made payable to a false name which could be cashed at a pair of currency exchanges hospitable to the operation. In order to cope with the large influx of parts, the yards regularly transported stolen parts in trucks which were frequently driven by Meadows or Turner to a warehouse in Schereville, Indiana which was owned by M & J Auto Wreckers and those same parts were then sold to salvage yards both within and outside Illinois. According to some reports, the largest purchaser was claimed to be Piper Motor Co., Inc. of Bloomfield, Iowa. In accord with their standard practice, the yards would also receive payment in the form of checks issued to fictitious payees that could be cashed at the cooperating currency exchanges.


The second crew involved corrupt police officers who protected the auto-theft ring. Besides Messino, other corrupt key figure in the operation was Robert Neapolitan, who was employed as an investigator for the Cook County Sheriff's Police Department and also had to co-conspirators officers Robert Cadieux and Ronald Sapit. Cadieux’s and Sapit’s job was to encourage known car thieves to supply them with stolen automobiles and to establish a chop shop operation, while also soliciting bribes in the form of auto parts and cash in exchange for police protection. One of the activities of these corrupt police officers was the "fixing" of a case in which Cadieux attempted to sell the front end of a 1980 Cadillac Eldorado, and in the process of obtaining a new "clean" title for a 1977 Ford pick-up truck. In fact, Neapolitan conducted the affairs of the sheriff's office through a pattern of racketeering activities.


It was a beautiful scheme which generated a lot of cash and made the crime bosses, such as Tocco, Joey Aiuppa and Jack Cerone, very happy on daily basis but the problem was that the government had enough and somebody decided to do something, but this time they hoped to be done for good. The investigation was started mainly because of the numerous killings which occurred during the 1970’s and also because of the high car theft rate which occurred during the same time and still continued to grow. The first problem which occurred in December, 1982, was the arrest of Mike Chorak on warrants charging him with possession of stolen auto parts and altering a vehicle identification number. The stolen auto unit also confiscated front end and doors of an $18,000, 1980 Lincoln Continental that had been stolen from a Lansing restaurant parking lot but as usual the vehicle identification number on the doors had already been altered. Facing an unavoidable prison term, Chorak deep inside knew that once he tried to muscle the government and now it was their turn, so the once loyal criminal decided to cooperate with the feds.


The so-called undercover operation, named “Operation Chisel”, lasted for almost two years until the Outfit got wind of the situation and sent a “message” to Chorak by killing one of his closest associates Robert Subatich. This guy was a 44 year old unemployed iron worker who drove a $20,000 car and was also involved in the car theft business. Story goes that once Subatich stabbed Chorak with a knife over some woman but in the end everything was good because they were close friends. Well their friendship was terminated when on January 2, 1983 the police found Subatich’s dead body in the trunk of his luxury automobile parked in a remote parking facility at O'Hare International Airport. The Outfit eliminated Subatich out of fear from becoming an informant because they knew that his buddy, who was singing like a canary, was going to rat on his partner and by now Lombardo didn’t need anymore rats running around. So two months later, the government managed to do a very “good” job on protecting their witness, because on March 3, 1983, two of Chorak’s family friends scaled a fence to enter his office after Chorak's wife, Laura, became worried when he failed to return home from work and didn’t return his phone calls. So they found him lying behind the counter of his office, with one bullet hole in the abdomen and another one in the back of his head. It was a pure example of a Mob execution. In those days, the Chicago Outfit was still infiltrated deeply within the justice system and it was still sort of a gambling move for some of the individuals who decided to step forward and tell their stories and at the same time to stay alive.


No matter what, the feds used some of the previous information given by the late Chorak, plus their previously collected data, and that same year they still managed to indict the whole car theft crew, including the corrupt cops, minus the Outfit’s administration such as Tocco or Lombardo. In fact this was a RICO/theft prosecution because it was built around an FBI electronic surveillance and following a three-week jury trial, six defendants were found guilty on all RICO charges. One year later, Thomas Covello received eight years and five years probation, Ralph Mascio was convicted of six counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods and was sentenced to four years imprisonment also followed by five years probation, Victor Meadows was convicted on two substantive counts, in addition to the RICO charge, and received three years, also followed by five years probation and Antoine Turner was sentenced to five years conditional probation. The jury acquitted Joseph Hlavach and Clement Messino on all seven substantive counts but each received a four year prison sentence on the conspiracy count. In the end, Hlavach's was suspended in favour of five years probation. As for Robert Neapolitan, the jury also found him guilty of a RICO conspiracy and he was sentenced to a period of one year incarceration and his two co-conspirators police officers Robert Cadieux and Ronald Sapit, besides pleading guilty, they also testified during the trial and later both were acquitted. This was a huge kick in the head for the Outfit’s car theft empire because the feds managed to break the backbone of a $4 million-a-year Chicago-based ``chop shop`` ring.


By now auto-theft had still been a Class III felony with a maximum penalty of two to five years in prison and possession of a stolen car was a Class IV felony carrying a one to three year sentence. But in 1985, some government investigators made a conclusion that the auto-theft cost the American population an estimated $5 billion a year, including $1 billion in law enforcement costs. The six-county Chicago metropolitan area alone had 54,075 thefts back in 1983, or 87.5 percent of the statewide total, compared with 48,254 in 1982. So some government “law-makers” decided to make new laws and decided to defeat forever this so called “menace of society”. And so President Ronald Reagan signed the Motor Vehicle Theft Law Enforcement with the purpose to increase the federal penalties and make it tougher for stolen parts to be marketed in the United States and abroad. In 1985, under a new federal statute, major auto theft offenders-rings of thieves and chop shop operators faced prison sentences of up to 20 years and forfeiture-of financial assets and property if convicted. In Illinois, a person convicted of car theft or possession of a stolen auto must be sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison under an amendment to the state criminal code that upgraded the crime’s severity. In addition, the legislation made it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to tamper with the vehicle identification numbers on dashboards. The law also deals with transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and one interstate auto theft had carried a maximum penalty up to 20 years and seizure of assets if the government can prove an auto theft ring was a continuing enterprise operated by organized criminals.


For example the next year, in 1986, government prosecutors tested their new laws on the previously mentioned Tocco’s car theft crew which operated in the Oak Lawn and Blue Island areas. The boss of the theft ring 45 years old Charles Guy Bills received 10 years in prison and his partners in crime Charles Soteras received 12-year term, Donald Sanders was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $30,000 and as for Jerry Rosenstein, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Another of Tocco’s associates in the chop shop business, who also fell into the government’s web, was south suburban criminal Ora Curry. He was the principal figure in a suburban chop-shop ring which was operated by at least 80 individuals and the whole operation grossed more than $300,000 a year. According to one story, some immigrants from Middle East countries, unknowingly bought stolen cars from Curry and within weeks, the cars were alleged to have been stolen again by Curry’s associates but this time the cars were cut up and the parts were shipped to nearby states for resale. Now this guy made a lot of money for Tocco because besides being involved in the chop shop racket, he also operated an alleged scheme involving insurance claims for nonexistent losses such as auto thefts. In just one year, Curry managed to fraudulently obtain $117,352 in payouts from four insurance companies and on top of that, he even received money for disability insurance. He was a pure example where the human eye has no limits, like for example even with all of those illegal incomes he even had the guts to peddle cocaine on the streets of Chicago.



Ora Curry


Now, this kind of a scumbag was on Tocco’s most favourite list, which made him very happy but not for long. One of Curry’s so-called mentors in the chop shop business was John Pronger, brother of the late Robert Pronger who was killed by the Outfit back in 1972. Now, besides being big player in transporting stolen auto truck parts from Hammond, Indiana to all over Illinois, John Pronger was also big in the narcotics business. From time to time, while doing his work like driving or transporting a stolen car, Pronger usually also had few kilos of cocaine stashed in some of the stolen vehicles. There are some reports which also indicate that by now Pronger was leaving the chop shop business and was entering the world of narcotics. By now most of these guys bought their kilos of cocaine from one South suburban narcotics trafficker known as Dante Autullo Jr. Cocaine was the main party drug during the 1980’s and obviously it was a big business and so a very “unusual” phenomenon occurred when many of the current or former Outfit-connected chop shop owners or car thieves at the time, again got involved in the narcotics racket.


I don’t know what to say, but looks like there was always something between organized car theft and narcotics which connected the two businesses. But as I previously said, the problem was that these guys had long time connections to the Outfit and at the same time they shared tables with some of these quite dangerous individuals. But the thing was that these so-called murderous members of Chicago’s “secret” criminal society lived by their own rules and since the 1970’s, one of those rules was “don’t get caught dealing”, a rule which was punishable by murder and a method which we saw in many of the previous examples. Now don’t get me wrong, guys like Pronger or Curry didn’t fully belong to the organization but instead they only fronted or paid street tax for their chop shop operations and some of them were not even considered an associates of the organization, but simple co-workers for some of the members or real associates of the criminal brotherhood. So if guys like Pronger or Curry were caught dealing drugs, then high level criminals such as Al Tocco might get in trouble also. Not just with the government but also with their superiors within the organization or the bosses, who still lived by the old ways and very often ordered the murders of their own members. So to avoid that kind of situation, Tocco was forced to order the murders and again, to make few new examples.



Al Tocco


And that’s what really happened. On April 28, 1988, former suburban Crete chop shop owner and Outfit associate turned drug dealer Eugene Bell was found strangled to death near Miami, Florida. Also in June that same year, another former chop shop operator turned drug dealer turned up dead. This time it was Sam Mann, another known Mob associate from the Dolton area, who was beaten to death probably by few men with baseball bats. If these guys were killed by some Colombian drug traffickers or “sicarios” for example, their bodies would’ve been so mutilated that probably some of the victim’s heads, arms or legs would’ve been missing because that was their so-called “signature” with the purpose to create fear or send messages to their rivals. So according to the style of the two killings, I strongly believe that they were both Outfit related.


The next murder contract was placed on John Pronger and the main reason was back in 1985, when one day the cops tailed Pronger while driving a pickup truck which was previously reported stolen. Later he parked at the garage of O’Hare Airport and took a flight to Florida. The feds decided to watch the pickup truck until Pronger returned from his trip. A couple of days later Pronger did return, entered his truck and started driving. Suddenly a whole team of federal agents stopped his car, arrested him and surprisingly for the feds, they also found a kilo of cocaine and a stack of $24,000. So he was charged with possession of kilogram cocaine and a car theft at the same time but Pronger's case did not come to trial nearly 21/2 years after his arrest and the seizure of the cocaine. Later he was found guilty but his sentencing hearing was delayed until June 2, 1988. Shortly after Pronger decided to appeal his conviction and so the Illinois Appellate Court in July set a $400,000 appeal bond. But Pronger's ex-wife received some good cash from “somebody” and posted the necessary 10 percent of the bond which permitted Pronger to go free. In fact, this was an old trick made by the Outfit where they pay the convict’s bond so he or she can walk the streets for at least awhile so the Outfit’s hitmen can do their job. On August 16, 1988, Pronger stayed at the home of his ex-wife Christine in Schererville at 2547 Spring Hill Drive in fashionable Scherervlle subdivision, south of Hammond, Indiana. At 3 a.m. somebody rang the doorbell and 64 years old Pronger went to the door to see who it was. As he got near the front door, the individual from the other side fired one shot through the door thus wounding Pronger in the left wrist. Then the gunman kicked the door open and fired another shot from a 357 Magnum handgun loaded with dum-dum bullets into Pronger’s chest, thus making him the second brother killed on the orders of the Chicago Outfit.


And so, the same mistake was done by Ora Curry also, meaning while he stole and transported vehicles, he also transported cocaine, but he was lucky. In August, 1986, Curry and his wife Rose were accused for multiple counts of income tax evasion and mail fraud Curry and his wife grossly understated their taxable income for the years 1979 and 1980. Some of the alleged unreported income was first derived from a substantial money trail developed by IRS investigators which indicated hidden profits from the sale of parts from stolen and stripped cars. The court ordered a $50,000 bond, which he later paid without any problem, and waited for sentencing on September 12, 1986, before U.S. District Judge Brian Duff. But while he was free on bond awaiting sentencing, drug agents arrested Curry on charges of selling cocaine to an undercover agent. Also while he awaited his sentencing, the feds managed to destroy Curry’s chop shop empire by arresting 88 of his associates for selling stolen vehicles to undercover state agents in a “sting” operation in Will County. Even though John Evon and Thomas Moriarty, prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department`s Strike Force against Organized Crime, had urged U.S. District Judge Brian Barnett Duff to impose a lengthy prison term, arguing that Curry had sold cocaine and weapons and carried out his business as a chop-shop dealer through a pattern of threats, on September 13, 1986, the judge sentenced reputed chop-shop operator Ora Curry to 18 years in prison, fined him $10,000 and ordered $174,000 in restitution. In fact, I believe that the prison sentence has saved Curry’s life from the hands of the Outfit. Even though he was a drug dealer, after this, there was no doubt that Curry`s conviction managed to hurt Tocco’s chop shop activities from McHenry to Will County.


The government’s attacks on Tocco’s territory continued when the feds arranged a lot of sting operations around the area, by posing as chop shop owners and car dealers. The operation really opened in October 1987, and the undercover agents spread the word around many junkyards, auto dealers and taverns about their chop shop operation. In a very short time period, the word spread with the speed of light among car thieves who started bringing stolen vehicles to the shop to be stripped and resold. In just few months, during 1988, 33 criminals sold 63 stolen autos and 2 stolen boats to undercover agents who had set up fake chop shop in the south suburbs. While the undercover cops paid from $300 to $5,000 for the cars, usually models such as BMWs Cadillacs, Porsches, Buicks and Corvettes, all of the illegal sales were recorded often on videotape by other federal agents, while hidden in vans or apartments, usually right across their targets. Insurance industry officials credited the undercover investigations with helping to reduce the number of auto thefts in Chicago between 19 and 25 percent for the first half of 1988.


But at the same time, according to numerous police reports, some of the organized car thieves became even more professional in doing their job. For example, you have pulled into the local shopping center in your new and shiny car and you are paranoid about getting scratches on this $20,000 purchase so you park toward the back of the lot where it is less likely to get dinged by someone’s car door. You lock it and then head for the supermarket with your shopping list. The problem is the two car thieves who watched you park have a shopping list too and your car is on it. An unscrupulous body shop owner needs your car's front end and is willing to pay $1,000; a fraction of its worth to get it. The thieves are grateful that you put your car in that dimly lit rear parking area because it makes their work less obvious. They don't need much time to take your car, maybe 30 seconds to enter and another minute or so to break the steering and ignition lock, and get it started. Just to be safe, one thief follows you into the supermarket with his beeper device in case you leave abruptly and he has to alert his colleagues. This hypothetical scenario suggested by police experience tells you something about latter-day car theft and it underscores the fact that today’s car thieves are typically slick, quick, techy professionals who still steal from shopping list and then some of them even left a note which generally said “If we want it, we’ll get it”. Back in the days, if a Toyota and a Cadillac were parked in the same lot, a thief would push the Toyota out of the way to get to the Caddy but today, the thief is just as likely to take the Toyota and maybe the Cadillac, too. Even the chop shops had more work to do because by now, more and more of those small, economy cars were on the road and that meant more and more cars for repair or replacement parts.


During the late 1980’s and early 90’s, many of the Outfit’s top bosses which were involved in the car theft business, such as Al Tocco, went to prison or died from natural causes. After the imprisonment of Albert Tocco, the leadership of his crew and remaining operations, including the car theft racket, was taken over by one Outfit member known as Dominick Palermo who in turn was also quickly imprisoned in 1991. Later, the Chicago Heights crew was allegedly absorbed by the so-called South Side crew which by now was headed by John Monteleone, allegedly one of the top Outfit bosses at the time. By now I mostly use the word “allegedly” because from this point on, up until this day, the Chicago Outfit is considered one of the most mysterious criminal organizations in the U.S., meaning the feds do not own much information on the group’s current hierarchy.



Chopped up Porsche


Also the so-called street tax was getting “out of style” and many of the organized car theft rings became independent, again, and so during the 1990’s the organized car theft rings were not as they used to be but they were certainly not out. During that same time period, many options for the car thieves became limited. For example, with the introduction of sophisticated “smart keys” in 1997 or today’s fingerprint ignition, hot-wiring a car is no longer an option for the car thieves. This mostly came out from the pressure of the consumer groups and insurers over the manufacturers to make their cars more secure. So with the help of the improved lock design, for the thieves it was no longer possible to unlock a car door with a piece of wire or by jamming a screwdriver into the lock and turning. But as I previously mentioned, as the protection for the cars evolved, so did the thief’s methods.


Today, many of the professional car thieves get inside the cars, with the help of all kinds of hand-made electronic devices, such as the usage of radio-scrambling devices to stop the car locking when a driver presses the remote control button. Usually unaware that he has left his car unlocked, the driver walks away while the thieves start to operate. According to numerous sources, all of these kinds of illegal devices can be found on the internet such as auction sites or in some cases they can be ordered straight from unscrupulous locksmiths and manufacturers but to be fair, they are not very easily available. It was demonstrated many times around the world that by using these so-called hand-made gadgets, it is possible for one car thief to take over an automobile’s onboard controllers and switch on lights, or even activate the brakes and operate the locks and engine. As I previously mentioned, to start the car many of the professional car thieves started using all kinds of hand-made electronic devices to exploit the “keyless” ignition systems which are now used in most of the high-class vehicles and so during the years, thousands of wealthy owners around the world with keyless BMWs, Range Rovers and Audis have become victims of the auto-theft racket.


Also some of the less professional car thieves discovered other ways to illegally gain access to vehicles such as acquiring car keys illegally through outright theft or by posing as legitimate vehicle owners seeking a replacement from a dealership or locksmith. Before a dealer or locksmith can make a duplicate key for the customer, the customer himself must provide a vehicle’s registration or title information showing that the customer is, in fact, the owner of the vehicle and to make things easier, the National Automotive Service Task Force has created a data exchange system that allows locksmiths and dealerships to access key codes and immobilizer reset information provided by automobile manufacturers. But the program was always blamed because of many examples of fraud, as well as organized group activities which resulted in numerous investigations. Some of the investigations were conducted on criminal activities where a rental vehicle will be returned with a good key in the ignition and a blank key along with it. The thieves then return to the rental lot later with the other good key and simply drive off with the car. Or, they will place a GPS tracker in the car and when it is re-rented, follow it to a destination and then steal it once it is parked. Or other cases where thieves use stolen identities or even create completely fraudulent new ones with phoney credit histories, and then walk into new car dealerships and secure loans for high-end vehicles. The vehicles are then shipped to a foreign seaport where they can be sold at a premium.


Even with all the good news about the decline in vehicle theft, no vehicle is theft-proof and if your car was ever stolen, then you know that overcoming the loss can be a major hassle but it’s a “must-be”. As for the Chicago Outfit, I really don’t know if these days they are still involved in the racket, but I’m sure of that the golden days of Fiore Buccieri and later of Al Tocco, are long gone.

Nice Work Toodoped Keep Them Coming bro When Jackie Cerone story coming ?

Very soon ricky

Very interesting, TD. I've often wondered way the Outfit Bosses tolerated these high profile "wars" for so long. Obviously they were make lots of money and the guys at the top were taking very few risks.

The part where you mentioned about handing down orders from 1, 2, 3, etc. I think it's very safe to say that Accardo, Aiuppa, Alex, and probably Cerone, were so insulated that it was unlikely anything would ever be traced back to them. Another example of how these guys developed a system, whether intentional or not, that protected the guys at the top.

Another good point was the piece about narcotics. Apparently dealing in drugs was pretty wide-spread within the Outfit. The only problem was if you got caught. I think the old-timers were against drug dealing, but certainly enjoyed the money. Getting caught was probably a death sentence depending on how well connected you were. But still a risky business.

The story about Catuara has been around for some time. I tend to believe something transpired that let him know it was time to retire. He was old school and never cooperated with the gov't, so he may have been given an opportunity to gracefully "get out." Who knows ?

A fellow forum member said it was likely that only a few people in the Outfit knew who was calling the shots at any given time. I tend to believe that is likely true. Even today I bet most people would not bet their savings or their home on who is calling the shots. These guys have learned to keep a low profile not be too flamboyant. Looks like it's working.

Thanks a lot GaryMartin.

According to one FBI memo, there ws this conversation between Accardo and Alex, and they talked about giving away "contracts". And Accardo said something like "When i get back from the trip ill give you the contracts" reffering to Alex and after that several murders did occur. So i believe that Accardo previously consulted with Ricca or Giancana or some of his capos but im sure that sometimes Alex or his brother Sam acted as "messengers" for the bosses regarding the contracts

As for Catuara, I belive that he wasnt worshiped much by some of his peers because there are some reports that he was a loudmouth. I believe that he even had a conflict with his boss Frank LaPorte. Catuara started from Chinatown but after the death of Roti Sr. he transfered to the Chicago Heights crew.

Good to hear Toodoped

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-threatening-national-crisis-Canada.html

The organized gangs running a billion-dollar industry stealing cars from the US to ship to Africa - with hundreds found stashed in containers on the East Coast and a theft EVERY SIX MINUTES threatening a 'national crisis' in Canada

Thanks for the additional info and also thanks for bumping up this old thread. I forgot that it existed here lol